MOSCOW (Russian Film Business Today) – The production company Central Partnership has launched production of 16 two-part TV-films about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The company has signed a contract with the director Oleg Pogodin (Man of the East). Together with screenwriters Gennady Ostrovsky (My Half-Brother Frankenstein, Poor Relatives) and Ilya Tilkin (Svoy-Chuzhoy, Weapon) Pogodin has started working on the scripts to eight films based on works by Arthur Conan Doyle with no previous film adaptations.

The remaining eight films will be based on the same stories as Igor Maslennikov’s venerable old TV series, in which Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin respectively played Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The name of the actor to play the great detective in Central Partnership’s project has not yet been disclosed. Besides Pogodin, directors working on the project are Bakhtier Khudoinazarov (Luna Papa) and Rezo Gigineishvili (The Heat). Officials from Central Partnership Group said that one of the films may even get a wide theatrical release.

Pre-production is scheduled for early 2009. Shooting of the first eight films is planned for Summer 2009 and the rest will be filmed in 2010. The budget for each film is $1 million for a project total of $16 million.

“It’s the most Russian-made expensive television project to date,” said Central Partnership’s general director Ruben Dishdishyan. “Viewers are becoming ever more demanding, and in order to keep them watching, we need to create something really entertaining and engrossing.”

Russian Film Business Today is keeping track of the developments.