Well, darn! I no more than got to ponder this item from Australia's Herald Sun than it was debunked from England. The Sun was reporting that Russell Crowe was all set to play Dr. Watson in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, instantly making Watson ten times more interesting than he's ever been allowed to be onscreen.

But just as all movie writers began pondering how incredibly brilliant it would be to see Crowe and Robert Downey Jr. pair up onscreen, perhaps as the Riggs and Murtaugh of Victorian London, it was dismissed entirely by none other than Guy Ritchie.

Ritchie was out doing red carpet duty for RocknRolla in London, when Empire asked him all about it. I'm kind of imagining a funny exercise in time difference here, where premiere reporters were being texted "Russ. C 2 be in Shlock Hlms?" from their Oz cousins just as Ritchie got out of his limo. Ritchie denied it all. "I don't have a Watson. Somebody just told me that I have Russell Crowe lined up but that's news to me. I suspect that hasn't happened and I'm still looking for my Watson." (I vote Paul Bettany. I guess he's becoming a bit of a smart sidekick cliche, but he would be really good.)

Filming is set to start in a month, so expect an Inglorious Bastards-like flurry of casting news. According to Susan Downey, producer of RocknRolla and owner of Robert, the story is all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's books, and yet none. "The world is within all the stories and it actually goes back to the books but the story is actually one that we made for the movie. What we can tell you is that he's a badass in this movie alright. That's what we're going back to, any Holmes fan that we've spoken to is getting really excited about this one."