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Robert Downey Jr. is set to play super detective Sherlock Holmes in an upcoming movie that Warner Bros. is hoping will setup a new franchise.

And Downey Jr.has no doubts that it was his work in summer blockbuster 'Iron Man' that got him the role: "I had a hell of a summer, and it's made me much more viable to play a lead role than I might have been in the past."

He went on to say the character was "just such a weirdo," which "could be a description of me on some days." Downey hopes the film will be a "kind of returning to a little bit more of what the stories always had in them and the scale of them and the canvas is so huge I just don't think they've ever had the budget to fully tell the story in a really big, fun way."

When asked what specifically he would bring to the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle character, he joked: "Clearly I'm going to do it better than it's ever been done."

Director Guy Ritchie added the 'Sherlock Holmes' movie will be his biggest movie "by a long shot", at least in terms of budget, and he hopes to stay true to the original Sherlock, and it would be less formal than previous screen incarnations.

"I really knew Sherlock Holmes from tape, I wasn't a very good reader, and what I had imagined in my mind was not exactly what I'd seen previously on film. We're trying to be as authentic as we can to the original Sherlock Holmes. We've tried to include a bit more Conan Doyle in it."

The movie is aiming for a 2010 release.

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