Sherlock Holmes franchise continues its expansion with a modern reinvention series focusing on his arch nemesis James Moriarty.

Fremantle and Operation Mincemeat producer Archery Pictures are collaborating on Moriarty [working title], which comes from writers Chris Cornwell (A Discovery of Witches) and Oliver Lansley (Where’s Wanda?).

The team said Moriarty will be a “modern reinvention of the crime procedural, based on the most famous villain in all of detective fiction.” Moriarty is a Professor of Criminal Psychology at Durham University but leads a secret double life as the mastermind behind every crime of sophistication in the North of England. When a rival criminal begins an assault on his underground empire, Moriarty will have only one choice: to join the police as a consultant, using the law as a weapon to dismantle his foe while keeping his true identity hidden from the police. Paired with Detective Imogen Burrows, a stoic Yorkshire detective, they’ll form a fearsome team, but Moriarty will soon realise that the real threat isn’t the rival criminal faction he’s dismantling.

Thoughts will naturally turn to who will play the lead, with casting yet to come. Moriarty famously played him in Steven Moffat’s hit BBC drama Sherlock and he has also been portrayed by the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Jared Harris, Eric Porter and Dónal Finn down the years. Finn plays him in Prime Video’s Young Sherlock, one of a number of Holmes franchise extensions on TV at present, alongside the likes of CBS spin-off Watson, in which he is played by Randall Park.

Fremantle and Archery, which was founded by Kris Thykier in 2014 and has made the likes of Operation Mincemeat, Netflix’s Fate: The Winx Saga and Bradley Cooper romcom Is This Thing On?, will collaborate on the project, which does not have a network attached as of yet. Fremantle is selling worldwide.

Thykier said: “We are thrilled to be working with Fremantle to bring to life the original and character driven spin off from the Sherlock Holmes universe that Chris Cornwell has created. Moriarty will show audiences what it takes to be a criminal genius, combining genre thrills with a playful, dark, and thrilling dive into the psychology of villainy.”

Rebecca Dundon, SVP Scripted Content at Fremantle, added: “We’ve been looking for a project to work with Archery on for a while and when Kris brought this to us, we instantly saw huge potential for a commercial, returning franchise that brings to life one of the more allusive characters in the Sherlock world.”

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories aboout the fictional detective well over 100 years ago.

The second edition of SXSW London is nearly upon us, with Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, starring Haley Bennett, Jack Whitehall, Lily Allen, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders, Sally Phillips, Misia Butler and Elyas M’Barek, opening the 2026 Screen Festival on Monday, June 1.

The rom-com from director Tina Gharavi and screenwriter Justine Waddell is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel Night and Day. But the movie is just one of a few dozen, along with short films, that are unspooling in the British capital throughout the June 1-6 event.

Peter Glanz’s darkly satirical Savage House, whose cast includes Richard E. Grant, Claire Foy, Bel Powley and Jack Farthing, is also among the headliner premieres of this year’s SXSW London, along with an exclusive first-look screening of the first two episodes of Adult Swim animated series Get Jiro, based on the DC/Vertigo graphic novel from Anthony Bourdain and starring the voice of Brian Tee (A House of Dynamite), which is set in a not-too-distant future Los Angeles where master chefs rule the town and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurants. 

Among international features getting their U.K. premiere at SXSW London are The Other Side of the Sun, directed by Tawfik Sabouni, Juan Pablo Sallato‘s The Red Hangar, Roya by director Mahnaz Mohammadi, Vladlena Sandu’s Memory, Remake from director Ross McElwee, and Only Rebels Win by director Danielle Arbid. SXSW London is owned and produced by Panarise, which operates under license from SXSW LLC, which is owned by Penske Media Corporation, the parent company of The Hollywood Reporter.

Anna Bogutskaya, the head of screen at SXSW London, and her team have had a lot of work narrowing down a big number of movies that they viewed heading into the 2026 second edition.

“This year, we had the benefit of having done one already last year with the same vision, [so] our programming process was a bit more refined,” she tells THR. “We had the same amount of slots, which is roughly 40 features.”

But there is a core lens through which the team evaluates films. “Our vision is heavily focused on international filmmakers and genre-friendly and genre-pushing storytelling,” explains Bogutskaya. “The shared DNA of SXSW in Austin and the one that we’re trying to build here in London is always at the heart of our programming. The other thing is balance, which you only really see as a whole when the program is fully finalized. Do we have enough documentaries of this flavor, do we not have enough films from East Asian countries, or do we not have enough French, Spanish or Mediterranean films? We’re always looking for balance, so it never feels too overly weighted in one direction – not too many horror films, not too many documentaries of the same tone, not too many fiction films of the same tone, not too many war films, comedies or road movies.”

A lot of screen time goes into finalizing the Screen Festival. “We watched maybe about 2,000, 3,000 films,” Bogutskaya tells THR. “You have to be extremely selective and extremely conscious of every decision. If we had a program of 200 films, we would have more leeway.”

Star power is part of the balance the team strives for. “We have some interesting kind of star power, including in our headliners, five of six are world premieres this year,” the SXSW London head of screen highlights. “We’ve got talent attending for all of them, from Claire Foy and Richard E. Grant to Haley Bennett. We have a lot of really strong British talent as well as international talent.”

The U.S. and Latin America also have a key presence. “One thing that we are trying to do is share the platform with the core ethos of the Screen Festival, which is international genre-bending, genre-friendly,” says the screen programming boss. “So, for instance, this year we have two international headliners that are both world premieres and both series – a huge Brazilian production called The Playoffs and Get Jiro, which is an anime series based on an Anthony Bourdain graphic novel. That is such an early get for us. I’m really proud of it, also because it is such an incredible show. It’s got that tone and humor and is just such a blast, so that screening is going to be such a wicked experience.”

The Playoffs, starring Cauã Reymond in a series about a former soccer star turned agent who runs from the militia, his family, and himself on the way to regaining glory, is also a coup, given its country of origin and the timing. “It is a huge production for Globo in Brazil that has an audience here, and also the timing with the World Cup was too delicious to ignore,” shares Bogutskaya. Indeed, the FIFA soccer World Cup in the U.S., Canada and Mexico runs June 11-July 19.

Are there any overarching themes across the Screen Festival? “That’s the sort of thing that always comes out after the program is done,” she says. “I can look at the films that we’ve programmed and see throughlines between them, but we never program with a theme in mind. What I can see looking at the program now is how characters, in both documentary and narrative films, are dealing with real-life, larger-than-life events, [whether] war or [other] challenges, by using art to make sense of them.”

One example is Sandu’s Memory, described on the SXSW London website as “a haunting blend of documentary and dream.” Born in Crimea and raised in war-torn Chechnya, Sandu looks back at her past through “fragments: family secrets, rumours, and the stories no one was allowed to tell,” notes a synopsis. “Using reconstructions and evocative, poetic imagery that recalls a childhood growing up in the Soviet Union.”

Similarly, the doc Remake sees McElwee dealing with the death of his son through filmmaking and The Other Side of the Sun “is an incredible documentary where they’re using puppetry to process the damage and the trauma of having been captured and tortured” in Syria. Plus, Joan Porcel’s La Carn (The Flesh), about “a queer performance artist who gets dangerously close to a stranger in an online chat room,” per a synopsis, features a young man who’s “creating a theater piece out of internet hookup culture and the really fleeting connections that you can establish with people through a ChatRoulette conversation,” the SXSW London head of screen points out.

“Even Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day is about a woman who’s looking up at the stars and using astronomy to make sense of a deeply patriarchal world,” notes Bogutskaya.

All in all, SXSW London 2026 audiences are in for a mix of laughter, tears, scares and new ideas – all while traveling the globe cinematically. Concludes Bogutskaya: “We’re bringing the world to London audiences through our curation. It’s a kind of travelogue through different styles and tones of filmmaking, including really provocative films.”

EXCLUSIVE: Ian Katz grew visibly emotional last week when he acknowledged there is a “gap” between Channel 4 feeling it had “made the right decisions” and “a situation where you have contributors who have been through a show and feel very let down.”

The Channel 4 programs boss was facing questions from the press on the Married at First Sight UK (MAFS) scandal, which has dominated headlines for a fortnight now.

A recent report using real-time reaction data taken from British TV productions, exclusively shared with Deadline, spotlighted a similar gap for behind-the-camera crew.

The Talent Trust, which compiled the Set Culture Report, termed this the “silence gap” and said it is hugely detrimental to the welfare of those making British TV. Around 40% of those surveyed for the report did not feel respected or treated with dignity on the production they were working on. Of those, more than three quarters (76%) didn’t feel they could speak up without worrying about unfair repercussions, hence a “silence gap.” More than half who didn’t feel respected worked behind the camera.

“Traditional duty-of-care models are heavily reliant on retrospective or reactive reporting, such as hotlines or on expecting a vulnerable individual to step forward,” said Talent Trust CEO Elizabeth Peyton-Jones. “However, more often than not, production sets are dealing with a complex psychological trap. For many creatives, the fear of being ‘cancelled’ or blacklisted from the industry is often more powerful than their fear of remaining in an abusive environment. Taking their word that ‘everything is okay’ in a high-pressure setting ignores the severe power dynamics at play.”

On TV sets, Peyton-Jones said “management and head offices are frequently perceived to avoid dealing with acute friction points rather than actively safeguarding their teams.” She pointed out that “younger creatives often do not trust traditional, corporate reporting lines,” instead choosing to “bypass internal mechanisms entirely and take their experiences directly to social media or external investigations after the fact, where they feel they have a safer platform.”

$67,000 cost

Fear of repercussion is by no means a new phenomenon, but the figures, which are generated during a production via anonymous feedback surveys, rather than after it has concluded, are stark. Deadline is reporting the research as chatter about welfare on UK TV productions abounds after two women who featured on MAFS said they were raped by their on-screen partners, with another alleging they were the victim of a non-consensual sex act. All partners have denied the charges and Channel 4 has commissioned two external reviews. This morning, BBC News reported complaints of a “toxic” culture on MAFS from behind-the-camera crew, which its production company has denied.

The Talent Trust stressed that its data “focuses on sector-wide macro trends rather than individual active commissions” and that it does not comment on specific incidents.

Instead, the Talent Trust’s research probed how much is lost on a production when this “silence gap” is formed and trust is lost.

According to the report, 71% of those who felt unsupported on productions said safety policies weren’t properly followed. This leads to tangible consequences. The Talent Trust crunched the numbers and found that a lack of support leads to hidden waste of more than £50,000 ($67,000) across a 30-day production, with this loss coming from higher overtime and burnout costs, along with technical errors. Proper support protects crew speed, risk mitigation and a reputation as a “smooth set,” which means people want to return for future seasons or to work with the same production company, the Talent Trust said.

When safety fails on set, each insurance claim per incident costs on average between £6,000 and £12,000, added the trust. When crew is lost mid production, this costs another circa-£3,000 to £8,000 per person.

The trust concluded by stressing that preparation is key. When people felt respected, it said, “return intent” of behind-the-camera crew was far higher, while “burnout flags dropped.”

The Talent Trust was previously commissioned by Channel 4 to research a number of productions following the suicide of John Balson, a true crime producer who in the months leading up to his death had been working on Channel 4’s In The Footsteps of Killers.