Some disappointing but not wholly unexpected news for Sherlock Holmes fans - Sherlock Holmes 3 director Dexter Fletcher has confirmed that the sequel is currently “on the back burner."

As reported by DigitalSpy, Fletcher recently remarked on an episode of the Celebrity Catch Up Podcast that the long-awaited follow-up to 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was facing a number of challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic. "Sherlock's hit its own issues on and off," Fletcher said. "That’s sort of sitting on the back burner at the moment until it becomes clear where the world is at and what's going to happen."

The director went on to say that his other in-development project, a film reboot of Roger Moore’s spy thriller series The Saint previously adapted into a 1997 film starring Val Kilmer, is facing identical problems to Sherlock Holmes 3. "They're both up against the same dilemma, the same issue that we all [have]: How do you get large groups of people together to create something and then shift them all around the world? And what do you do with actors that are in a love scene? It's complicated.”

Obviously the big takeaway from Fletcher’s quotes (other than the revelation that people will be boning in either The Saint or Sherlock 3 or possibly both) is that the pandemic is continuing to hold most productions in limbo. This is doubly a shame, because I am a fan of both the Sherlock Holmes series and of Fletcher as a filmmaker. Fletcher directed the excellent 2019 Elton John biopic Rocketman before taking over the popular Sherlock franchise starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law from Guy Ritchie. (Ritchie fans will probably recognize Fletcher as the fastidious Soap from Ritchie’s breakout film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.) For more on Sherlock, click here to read about Downey Jr.'s ideas for a potential Sherlock Holmes cinematic universe.