‘Lot No. 249’: ‘Sherlock’ Co-Creator to Adapting Arthur Conan Doyle Story; Kit Harington to Star!!

Sherlock creator Mark Gatiss is returning to the world of Arthur Conan Doyle. Gatiss has penned an adaptation of Doyle‘s undead mummy short story Lot No. 249, which will star Kit Harington. Deadline reports that the classic tale of horror will be the latest entry in the BBC‘s A Ghost Story for Christmas series, an annual series of scary stories.

It was once traditional to tell ghost stories during the Christmas holidays, and Gatiss has attempted to revive that tradition; previous Gatiss A Ghost Story for Christmas productions include The Tractate Middoth, The Dead Room, Martin’s Close, The Mezzotint, and Count Magnus, all of which save The Dead Room were adaptations of ghost stories by British horror writer M.R. James. Says Gatiss, “Lot No.249 is personal favourite and is the grand-daddy — or should that be Mummy? — of a particular kind of end of empire chiller: a ripping yarn packed with ghastly scares and who-knows-what lurking in the Victorian closet.” In addition to Harington, late of Game of Thrones and Eternals, the film will also star Freddie Fox (The Great), Colin Ryan (Boundless), John Heffernan (Becoming Elizabeth), James Swanton (Host), Jonathan Rigby (Father Brown), and Andrew Horton (Jupiter’s Legacy). Lot No. 249 was filmed in Hertfordshire, UK earlier this year, and will air at Christmas on BBC Two. No American broadcaster or streamer has yet been announced.

What Is ‘Lot No. 249’?

Written in 1892 for Harper’s Magazine by Sherlock Holmes creator Doyle, Lot No. 249 tells the tale of Abercrombie Smith, who begins to suspect that Egyptologist Edward Bellingham is reanimating an Egyptian mummy he owns (the titular Lot No. 249) and sending it to attack his enemies. The story introduced the concept of a killer undead mummy, which served as the inspiration for the following century of Egyptian-themed horror fiction, including Boris Karloff‘s 1930 turn as The Mummy and its subsequent sequels and remakes. Lot No. 249 was also directly adapted as one of the segments of 1990’s Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, and featured Christian Slater, Steve Buscemi, and Julianne Moore.