<Tr> <Th> Budget </Th> <Td> $90 million </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Box office </Th> <Td> $524 million </Td> </Tr> <P> Sherlock Holmes is a 2009 British - American neo-noir mystery period action film based on the character of the same name created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle . The film was directed by Guy Ritchie and produced by Susan Downey and Dan Lin . The screenplay, by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg, was developed from a story by Wigram and Johnson . Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law portray Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson respectively . In the film, set in 1890, eccentric detective Holmes and his companion Watson are hired by a secret society to foil a mysticist's plot to expand the British Empire by seemingly supernatural means . Rachel McAdams stars as their former adversary Irene Adler and Mark Strong portrays villain Lord Henry Blackwood . </P> <P> The film went on general release in the United States on 25 December 2009, and on 26 December 2009 in the UK, Ireland, the Pacific and the Atlantic . </P>

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