It’s a fairly safe assumption that Sherlock Holmes’ arch-villain Professor Moriarty will play a larger part in the sequel after his brief appearance in the first movie, essentially a shadowy figure in a carriage with a voice that many people racked their brains trying to figure out who it belonged to.
For a while, it was rumored Brad Pitt would play the role of Professor Moriarty, and people assumed incorrectly that was his voice–it had been declined by Ritchie–but that voice may be irrelevant, because according to our unconfirmed sources, Ritchie is hoping to get Daniel Day-Lewis to play the role.
Day-Lewis was last seen in his Oscar-winning role in Rob Marshall’s Nine after winning an Oscar for his menacing role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, the latter being a great example of why he’d be perfect for the villainous role. If that that doesn’t work out, other names that have been bandied about as being in consideration include Sean Penn, Javier Bardem and Gary Oldman. The first two are also recent Oscar winners, Bardem also for playing a bad guy in the Coens’ No Country for Old Men, and Oldman already has a good working relationship with Warner Bros. having appeared in Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies and The Book of Eli. Of course, Oldman and Day-Lewis do have somewhat of an advantage already being British as well.
At this very early point in the process, we can only report this as an UNCONFIRMED RUMOR, although we expect once Ritchie’s new script is finished and it starts making the rounds, we’ll start hearing which of these names comes to the forefront.
