How is this for strange casting news? Brad Pitt is joining the cast of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. Brad will be playing Sherlock’s arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty. Even though filming on Sherlock Holmes ended many months ago, it seems Guy Ritchie was rethinking the film as he edited it and showed a rough cut to a select few. Guy and producers decided that Sherlock’s nemesis needed to be bigger, both in film time and characterization. So Guy talked his Snatch buddy Brad Pitt into coming in for a couple of weeks of emergency filming as Prof. Moriarty. So utterly strange. Typically, Prof. Moriarty has been portrayed as British or vaguely European, which makes me wonder if Brad will be doing an accent for the role. The Daily Mirror was one of the first outlets to break the story, but now everyone is picking it up, so I think this one might be true:

When you’re making a movie about Sherlock Holmes, it seems elementary to include the detective’s arch enemy – unless you are Guy Ritchie, of course.

Madonna’s ex-hubby got in a right pickle with movie execs when they clapped eyes on the rough cut of his latest film… and felt like re-titling it the Mystery of the Missing Moriarty. They ordered the director to reinstate the great Holmes’ evil nemesis, pronto.

But what could have been a huge disaster for Guy, 40, has actually turned out incredibly well – his film now boasts Brad Pitt! Desperate for help, Guy phoned his old mucker Brad, who had starred in his gangster flick Snatch. Fortunately, Brad, 45, had a couple of days free in his busy schedule to pop over to Blighty to play the evil criminal mastermind.

Anxious studio execs have already put the film’s release date back until after Christmas. Now they are just praying Brad will be available long enough to shoot all his scenes in one run, to avoid any further delays.

Filming with Brad is due to start this week in London and on location at Cliveden House – the venue beside the Thames at Berkshire is the backdrop for Moriarty’s home.

A source on the set tells us: “It’s a huge coup to have Brad joining the cast. He has worked for Guy before and said if he could, he would do anything to help out. It was an oversight in the film not to make a bigger deal about Moriarty. He is mentioned as Holmes’ arch enemy, but the bosses wanted Guy to make more of him. Jude Law (who plays Dr Watson) and Robert Downey Jr (Holmes) have already shot their scenes.

“But now that 10 extra days have been added to shoot the new ones, they may be called back for a day or two. Brad is expected to be filming all over London. Cliveden House has been earmarked as a location for Moriarty’s home. There will be scenes shot at Royal Victoria Dock, Pontoon Docks, Pinewood and Chatham Docks in Kent. And they will be using clips around City of London to set the scene.”

“It’s going to be a full-on couple of days, but now the release date has been pushed back they might just do it in time.”

And with Brad on board, we deduce that Guy could have a hit on his hands…

[From the Daily Mirror]

Brad and Angelina are already in France, having flown to Provence in a private, rented Gulfstream over the weekend. OK! Magazine theorized that they were going to spend the rest of the summer in their chateau, but who knows? With Brad flying to England for the Sherlock Holmes filming, maybe Angie and the kids will stay in France, and Brad will join them in a couple of weeks.

In one more piece of casting news, Brad Pitt will be voicing a superhero in a newly-announced Dreamworks animated film, Oobermind. Brad doesn’t have the main role, though – he’s playing second fiddle to Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and Jonah Hill. According to Variety, “Ferrell [plays] the title role of a supervillain who imagines all his dastardly dreams coming true after defeating good-guy rival Metro Man (Pitt), only to find life quite boring without an adversary. To fill the void, Oobermind creates a new superhero, Titan (Hill), who also wants to be bad, forcing Oobermind to switch sides. The three actors join Tina Fey, already onboard to play the reporter tasked with keeping track of the city’s confusing superhero situation.” It actually sounds like a funny movie. This will be Brad’s first animated-voice work since Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.

UPDATE: Warner Bros. (the studio releasing Sherlock Holmes) is denying this. They gave a statement to Us Weekly, saying “The report in today’s London Mirror is completely inaccurate. Brad Pitt is not joining the cast of Sherlock Holmes and we’re extremely pleased with the production of the film. As planned, it will be released on Christmas Day, 2009. In order to complete the movie, we’ve scheduled a few days on set to shoot a couple of additional scenes, obtain pick-up shots, and perfect some of the visual effects elements, all of which is standard filmmaking practice.” This is honestly one of the weirdest stories ever. Part of me thinks that Brad really is doing a few days of work on the film, and they want to keep it hush-hush until the general release.