All the key cast members of Sherlock Holmes 2 are starting to fall in place.  Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are back as Holmes and Watson, obviously.  Rachel McAdams will reprise her role as Irene Adler, though in a diminished capacity.  Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) will make her English-language debut as the sequel's female lead, rumored to be a French Gypsy.  Now, the endlessly witty Stephen Fry (Alice in Wonderland) has shared that he will play Sherlock's brother Mycroft in the film.  (The only piece missing: who will play Moriarty?)

Hit the jump for Fry's comments on the role, as well as some background info on the character.

While on BBC's 5 Live radio program, Fry compared the role of Mycroft to his experience on the Oscar Wilde biopic Wilde:

I’m playing Mycroft in the sequel to the Sherlock Holmes film Guy Ritchie directed with Robert Downey Jr., and that sort of part is fun, but just once in a while to play a genuine all round sort of lead figure with complexity and tragedy and wit and all the sort of things that Oscar [Wilde] had was a once in a lifeftime thrill. [Bleeding Cool] 

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Count me among the millions charmed by Fry over the years.  He should make a fine addition to the cast, and a cursory overview of the character's Wikipedia page suggests a really intriguing sybling dynamic:

mycroft_holmes_illustration

"Possessing deductive powers exceeding even those of his younger brother, Mycroft is nonetheless incapable of performing detective work similar to that of Sherlock as he is unwilling to put in the physical effort necessary to bring cases to their conclusions." 

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Here's how Sherlock describes his brother in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter:

He has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points. 

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Sherlock Holmes 2 hits theaters on December 16, 2011.