Jared Harris relished the chance to play iconic villain Professor James Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, yet he says he's unlikely to play the baddie again.

Last month, Robert Downey Jr confirmed that he was still hoping to reunite with Jude Law for a third Sherlock Holmes movie, seven years after A Game of Shadows was originally released.

Digital Spy caught up with Jared Harris to chat about his new TV series The Terror, and couldn't pass up the chance to ask about the likelihood of Professor Moriarty being a part of Sherlock Holmes 3.

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"Robert sort of teased it but that's been true for a while," he explained. "I think they commissioned some writers to write Sherlock Holmes 3 and 4, I don't know what happened to that. It keeps popping every now and then. They don't talk to me, I've no idea what their plans are.

"I think the last iteration when they last wrote a screenplay for Sherlock Holmes 3, Moriarty wasn't in it. So, I'm not focusing on it."

As for whether he'd be up for returning if asked, Harris said: "It's not up to me. Those decisions have been taken in a room that I have no access to."

Self-confessed comic geek Jared also tells us he has the original copies of Watchmen, Dark Knight and Swamp Thing and laments about the "familiarity" of superhero movies.

"They've gone from someone who wants to take over the world, and then it's someone who wants to flatten a city; always, somehow the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge – that thing's been destroyed so many times in the last ten years," he complained.

"And then it's about destroying worlds and then it's about destroying universes. The people who play the bad guys, you just really feel for them, what spin can you put upon something like that?

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"I experienced it during Sherlock Holmes. In that sense, he was the original super villain. I had to answer all those questions in playing Moriarty. In a way, I feel I've done it, from the villain's side of it – there is no bigger villain than Moriarty."

Jared Harris stars in The Terror, beginning April 24 on AMC on BT TV.

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