If you've been longing for a re-pairing of rival NASCAR champions Ricky Bobby and Jean Girard, only this time in something a little more fog-enshrouded, well, then, hold on to your pipes: It was announced today that Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell will star in the working-titled Sherlock: Elementary Deductions For Solving Puzzling Murders Throughout Queen Victoria's London in a Deerslayer Hat—an updating of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic mysteries. From Variety.com:

Columbia Pictures has set an untitled comedy that will star Sacha Baron Cohen as master detective Sherlock Holmes and Will Ferrell as Watson, his crime-solving partner.

Etan Cohen ("Tropic Thunder") is writing the script, and Judd Apatow and Jimmy Miller will produce.

"Just the idea of Sacha and Will as Sherlock Holmes and Watson makes us laugh," said Col co-prexy Matt Tolmach. "Sacha and Will are two of the funniest and most talented guys on the planet, and having them take on these two iconic characters is frankly hilarious."

While Holmes purists will likely decry this an an outrageous Ferrelification* of sacred text, we are already giddily anticipating what stylistic flourishes Cohen will bring to the morphine-hooked crime-solver, and how long it will take before he pulls the costume designer aside to explain how he "always pictured Holmes as being the most... anatomically gifted...of all the great detectives. If you catch my drift. Perhaps we could reimagine those frumpy cloaks he wears into something like a nice Victorian bicycle-short? Smuggling a can of Krylon? I'm just spitballing here."

*Defined by The New Hollywood Heritage Dictonary as "any screen treatment in which a profoundly dimwitted, frequently arrogant central character sporting a buffoonish hairdo figures prominently."

• Holmes pic nabs Baron Cohen, Ferrell [Variety]

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