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GUY SWEPT AWAY BY WORK

Ritchie’s planning six or seven movies

Sunday July 20,2008

By Henry Fitzherbert

GUY Ritchie has signed up to be busier than ever for the next five years as rumours abound about his rocky marriage to Madonna.

The film director says he will make six or seven movies in that period – doubling his entire output since the criminal underworld Brad Pitt movie Snatch in 2000.

“It’s my intention to be very busy over the next five years,” revealed Ritchie, 39.

With his latest film, RocknRolla, about to be released, he listed some of his projects, including an action- heavy “reimagining” of Victorian sleuth Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Downey Jnr, plus a possible remake of The Dirty Dozen and two sequels to RocknRolla.

“I’ve written a second one and I’ve got a third mapped out. At one point I wanted to shoot three in one hit. I like these kinds of films. They are very watchable from where I’m sat, so I’d shoot the whole lot.

“And I think we probably have five or six projects that we’re pretty sure we’re going to make. I kind of fancy myself at making films quite quickly.”

His latest movie, another gangster film set in London’s criminal underworld, is being heralded as a return to form after the debacle of Swept Away, starring Madonna.

“It reminds you why he was so successful in the first place,” says the review in Total Film, in a nod to the movie that made his name, Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.

The story revolves around a crooked land deal orchestrated by a Russian billionaire and stars Gerard Butler and Gemma Arterton.

“Obviously with Lock, Stock and Snatch, this will be seen as a sort of return to that genre,” said Ritchie.

“But I think this one also has a certain ‘now-ness’. I’ve tried to make it a reflection of contemporary London.”

Ritchie’s increased workload comes as he is said to be trying to save his marriage to Madonna weeks before she turns 50.

This week they put on a show of family unity in New York, photographed with children Rocco, seven, and Lourdes, 11.

Madonna’s brother, Christopher Ciccone, claims in a new book that the only thing holding them together is a joint obsession with the mystical Jewish faith, Kabbalah.