We don’t know what’s going to happen to the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Avengers 4 next year, but at least Robert Downey Jr. doesn’t need to worry about whether or not he’ll still have big movie franchises to appear in. According to Deadline, Warner Bros. has officially announced that a third entry in its vaguely steampunk-ish Sherlock Holmes series will be released in 2020. Downey is set to return as Holmes, who faked his death in 2011's A Game of Shadows, and Jude Law is also expected to return as Dr. John Watson. However, it’s still unclear if original director Guy Ritchie will also be coming back.
As Deadline notes, Sherlock Holmes 3 will be opening alongside the highly anticipated (?) release of Avatar 2, mirroring the way the first Holmes opened against the first Avatar back in 2009. Both movies ended up making a good amount of money—though Avatar made a lot more money—so this seems like less of a rematch and more of an explicit attempt to give audiences something to see that isn’t James Cameron’s latest space epic.