Basil Rathbone Zanuck at Lucey's Restaurant in Hollywood, proposed a film version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles". When asked who could possibly play Holmes, Markey incredulously replied, ""Who?!" Basil Rathbone!" The film was so successful that Fox produced a sequel which appeared later in 1939. Interest in Holmes cooled at Fox, but Universal Pictures picked up the character, and twelve feature films were made between 1941 and 1944 for release until 1947, all of which co-starred Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. The first two films, "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (both
Sherlock Holmes the Universal films abandoned Victorian Britain and moved to a then-contemporary setting in which Holmes occasionally battled Nazis. The 1984-85 Italian/Japanese anime series "Sherlock Hound" adapted the Holmes stories for children, with its characters being anthropomorphic dogs. The series was co-directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Between 1979 and 1986, Soviet television produced a series of five television films, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson". The series were split into eleven episodes and starred Vasily Livanov as Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Watson. Livanov was appointed an Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire for a performance ambassador