Director Guy Ritchie is best known for British crime capers Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. (Evan Agostini/Associated Press)

Guy Ritchie, the British filmmaker behind crime capers Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, is set to give iconic literary sleuth Sherlock Holmes a modern-day makeover.

Ritchie has signed on to write and direct a film reimagining the classic Arthur Conan Doyle character "as more adventuresome and less stuffy" than previous incarnations, according to movie industry trade paper Hollywood Reporter.

The Warner Bros. project is based on an upcoming comic book about the deductive detective by Lionel Wigram, who will also serve as a producer on the eventual film.

The film is tentatively slated for release in 2010.

Dan Lin, senior vice-president of production at Warner Bros., said in an interview that the film intends to reinvent the Holmes character in the same way director Christopher Nolan has refreshed the Batman film franchise.

The traditional, deerstalker-cap-and-pipe portrait of the fictional detective could, for instance, be reimagined so as to give greater prominence to Holmes' skills as an expert boxer and master swordsman.

No casting has yet been announced. Holmes has previously been portrayed many times on stage, film and television, including by U.S. actor Frank Langella and British actors such as Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett.