Literary adaptation
Works of literature have been adapted for film from the dawn of the industry. Some of the earliest examples come from the work of Georges Méliès, who pioneered many film techniques. In 1899, he released two adaptations — "Cinderella" based on the Brothers Grimm story of the same name and "King John", the first known film to be based on the works of Shakespeare. The 1900 film "Sherlock Holmes Baffled", directed by Arthur Marvin featured Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character Sherlock Holmes intruding upon a pseudo-supernatural burglary. The film, considered the first detective movie, ran for only 30 seconds and was originally intended to be shown in hand-cranked Mutoscope machines.
Sherlock Holmes pastiches
In 1985, director Barry Levinson made a film called "Young Sherlock Holmes" (a.k.a. "Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Fear") with a story about the youth of Holmes and Watson as Secondary School students and their first great adventure, even before "A Study in Scarlet". There are a lot of references about Holmes canon such as the violin, the pipe, "elementary, my dear...", the clothes and the reason why Holmes never married, and it includes the first meeting of Holmes and Professor Moriarty. The film was produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Chris Columbus; the novelization was written by Alan Arnold.