• Ron Howard Will Not Direct Dan Brown’s Latest Book: The Lost Symbol

    // Gradly // blog, Books, Movies, News No Responses

    According to some insiders, Ron Howard will not be directing Dan Brown‘s latest Robert Langdon adventure The Lost Symbol. He has directed and produced both of Sony Pictures’ films based on Dan Brown’s bestselling novels, The Da Vinci Code (in 2006) and Angels & Demons (2009). He is only looking to produce the film for Sony Pictures this time around,  So Sony Pictures has started looking for a new helmer.

    “Ron told Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton that he was not going to be directing Dan Brown’s novels anymore,” an insider tells me. “He just didn’t want to do that thing over and over, the same character and the same stories.”

    Tom Hanks in the other side is still set to reprise his role in the film as the Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon.

    if you look at Howard’s box office track record as a director since his Oscar-winner A Beautiful Mind (2001), the Dan Brown films were his most successful with such wide release movies as Missing, Cinderella Man, and The Dilemma all underperforming.

    Not to mention, The Lost Symbol sold 1 million hardcovers and e-books in the U.S., the UK, and Canada on its first day, making it the fastest-selling adult novel in history.

    [via deadline]

  • Dan Brown writing the script for the upcoming THE LOST SYMBOL Movie

    // Gradly // blog, Conspiracies, Movies, News 3 Responses

    The Lost Symbol

    Mega-selling mystery author Dan Brown has taken over writing duties on the film adaptation of The Lost Symbol.

    Columbia Pictures is developing the film version of Brown’s most recent novel, which was published in 2009 and sold more than a million copies in its first day on shelves. In it, Brown’s regular protagonist, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, gets mixed up with the Freemasons in Washington, D.C.

    The 2006 adaptation of The Da Vinci Code and the 2009 version of Angels & Demons grossed $1.24 billion at the worldwide box office for Sony. But this is the first time Brown has taken on screenwriting duties. Akiva Goldsman penned Da Vinci and co-wrote Demons with David Koepp.

    Oscar-nominated Eastern Promises scribe Steven Knight first took a run at the Symbol screenplay. Although Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment is once again producing, Howard, who directed the first two Brown adaptations, has not committed to directing Symbol. Nor has star Tom Hanks officially come on board to reprise Langdon.

    Regardless, given the sure-thing built-in audience, Sony is sure to have Symbol in theaters sooner rather than later. With Men in Black III and the Spider-Man reboot already set for summer 2012, here’s betting that Brown’s latest is on screens the following summer.

    [via: THR]