The Dan Brown Enigma (30 page)

Inoue Sato
: Director of CIA’s Office of Security, she is a tiny, dangerous, withered Japanese lady with no sense of humour, but is highly intelligent and very suspicious.

Nola Kaye
: CIA analyst.

Rick Parrish
: CIA security specialist.

Turner Simkins
: CIA field operations leader.

Reverend Colin Galloway
: A Freemason like Peter Solomon and Warren Bellamy, he is also the Dean of Washington National Cathedral.

Trent Anderson
: Capitol police chief, he is very rugged, determined and straight.

Alfonso Nuñez
: Capitol security guard, he is level-headed and very perceptive.

Jonas Faukman
: This name is an anagram of Brown’s real-life editor, Jason Kaufman and plays an editor of a New York newspaper.

Officer Paige Montgomery
: She is a private security company officer.

T
he following information can be found on a variety of websites across the internet, including the Wikipedia web pages for each film and imdb.com.

Director:Ron Howard

Producers:Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and John Calley

Screenplay:Akiva Goldsman, based on Brown’s
The Da Vinci Code
novel

Original Score:Hans Zimmer

Cinematography:Salvatore Totino

Editing:Daniel P. Hanley, Mike Hill

Studio:Columbia Pictures, Imagine Entertainment

Distribution:Columbia Pictures

US Release:19 May, 2006

Running time:149 minutes

Languages:English, French, Spanish and Latin

Country of Origin:United States

Budget:$125 million

Gross revenue:$758,239,851

Professor Robert Langdon:Tom Hanks

Sophie Neveu:Audrey Tautou

Sir Leigh Teabing:Sir Ian McKellen

Silas:Paul Bettany

Bezu Fache:Jean Reno

Bishop Aringarosa:Alfred Molina

Mary Magdalene:Charlotte Graham

André Vernet:Jürgen Prochnow

Lt. Jérôme Collet:Etienne Chicot

Remy Jean (Rémy Legaludec in the novel):Jean-Yves Berteloot

Jacques Saunière:Jean-Pierre Marielle

Young Silas:Hugh Mitchell

Michael the Cleric:Seth Gabel

Sister Sandrine: Marie-Françoise Audollent

The film was released in the US on 19 May 2006 through Columbia Pictures entering major release in many other countries the day before. On 17 May 2006 it was previewed at the Cannes Film Festival opening night.

As with Brown’s book the movie generated a lot of controversy from the Catholic Church. Indeed, many churches called for its members to boycott the film. Protestors appeared at some early screenings and some early reviews were very negative but this had little impact on audience numbers. In fact, the film grossed more than $230 million the first weekend, making it the third most profitable film opening weekend ever while worldwide,
The Da Vinci Code
earned more than £758,239,851 as of 2 November 2006, proving it to be the second highest-grossing film of that year.

Ron Howard and Tom Hanks had both worked together on two other Howard films,
Splash
in 1984 and
Apollo 13
in 1995. They also worked on the prequel film version of Dan Brown’s second novel and first Robert Langdon book,
Angels & Demons
along with the third Robert Langdon novel,
The Lost Symbol
.

Composer Hans Zimmer was nominated for the 2007 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.

Dan Brown sold the film rights for
The Da Vinci Code
for $6,000,000 with the filming scheduled for a May 2005 start but delays caused the filming to start on 30 June 2005.

For locations, the film producers procured permission to film in the Louvre but were not allowed to shine any light on the
Mona Lisa
so they used a replica and used the
Mona Lisa
’s chamber as a storage room during filming. For the scenes set in Westminster Abbey the crew were able to use Lincoln and Winchester cathedrals to substitute for Westminster Abbey and Saint-Sulpice.

The Saint-Sulpice location was recreated by
Rainmaker U.K
. a post-production company. The fee for the use of Lincoln Cathedral was £100,000 and filming there took place between the 15 and 19 August 2005. Winchester Cathedral was heavily criticised for allowing its premises to be used for the film and so answered these jibes by funding an exhibition and lecture series debunking the book. Other UK locations included Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire for Castel Gandolfo and Shoreham Airport in West Sussex for Le Bourget Airport, along with Fairfield Halls, the Temple Church in London, Burghley House in Lincolnshire, and Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. Other locations were shot in France and Germany.

Pinewood Studios was used for many of the interior scenes including the opening sequences, where a replica of the interior of the Louvre was created. Also shot at Pinewood were the underwater sequences at the new state-of-the-art Underwater Stage at Pinewood.

Before the film was released Archbishop Angelo Amato, on behalf of the Vatican, called for a boycott of the film at a conference on 28 April 2006 while Opus Dei, the organisation figuring prominently in the book, issued a statement on 14 February 2006 asking for references that could offend Catholics be removed from the film. The same organisation later issued another statement on 16 April asking the film makers to include a disclaimer as a sign of respect to the history of the Church, religious beliefs of viewers and to Jesus Christ.

In America, the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office for Film and Broadcasting
rated the film as morally offensive because of the errors and theories in it. Catholic groups and churches across the world denounced the film with church leaders urging their members not to see it. In China, the production did very well, grossing over $13 million before the government quickly pulled it for no reason.

Other countries followed, especially in the Philippines where the
Philippine Alliance Against Pornography
demanded the president of the country pull the film, saying it was pornographic. It was eventually rated as 18 Restricted without interference from President Malacañang. In Lebanon the film was banned outright. In India influential Christian groups demanded the film be banned and in some states such as the Punjab it has been. But where it was released it was given an ‘Adults Only’ rating along with a disclaimer saying the film is a work of fiction.

Tom Hanks, who plays Robert Langdon, said during an interview with the
Evening Standard
that the film was merely a fun scavenger hunt and should be taken at face value.

Overall the response from the critics is poor and it was poorly received at the Cannes Film Festival where it debuted. The reviews were not all bad; some praised the film as being a production that assumes the audience have the intelligence to understand the many twists and turns in the plot.

Even so, the film grossed more than $29 million on its opening day in the US and more than $224 million around the world on its opening weekend. It stands as third for opening weekends behind
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
and
X-Men: The Last Stand
while being in second place in the highest grossing opening weekend worldwide behind
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
. In its first week it was Number 1 at the US Box Office, grossing more than $111 million and in 2006 was the fifth highest gross of that year. Less than a month after its release in the US it passed the $200 million mark.

Three editions of the film were released on 14 November 2006, a three disc release in widescreen and full screen along with a
History Channel
documentary, a two-disc set and a special edition set including a Robert Langdon replica journal and working cryptex along with the two-disc set. Each edition includes director Ron Howard’s introduction and other bonus material. An extended version with an additional 25 minutes of film was released in Australia, New Zealand and Latin America. Both Hong Kong and Korea got the extended version on a two-disc set along with the special edition featuring the working cryptex and journal which was also released in France and Spain. On 28 April 2009 the extended version was released in North American on blue-ray.

Director:Ron Howard

Executive Producers: Dan Brown, Todd Hallowell, Marco Valerio Pugini (Italy)

Producers:Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and John Calley

Associate Producers:William M. Connor, Anna Culp, Kathleen McGill and Louisa Velis

Screenplay:Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp

Cinematography:Salvatore Totino

Original Score:Hans Zimmer

Editing:Dan Hanley

Casting:Janet Hirschenson, Jane Jenkins and Michelle Lewitt

Production Design:Allan Cameron

Art Direction:Alex Cameron

Set Decoration:Robert Gould

Costume Design:Daniel Orlandi

Makeup Department:David Abbott

Studio:Columbia Pictures, Imagine Entertainment

Distribution:Columbia Pictures

US Release:15 May 2009

UK Release:14 May 2009

Running time:138 minutes, 146 minutes extended edition

Languages:English, French, Spanish and Latin

Country of Origin:United States

Budget:$150 million

Box Office Gross:$133,375,846 (USA) 2 August 2009, $352,600,000 internationally, and $485,975,846 worldwide according to
The Numbers
web site at http://
www.the-numbers.com/movies/2009/ANDEM.php

Robert Langdon:Tom Hanks

Camerlengo McKenna:Ewan McGregor (Carlo Ventresca in the book)

Vittoria Vetra:Ayelet Zurer

Commander Maximilian Richter: Stellan Skarsgård (Combination of Kohler and Rocher in the book)

Inspector Ernest Olivetti:Pierfrancesco Favino

The Assassin:Nikolaj Lie Kaas

Claudio Vincenzi:David Pasquesi Vatican police officer

Cardinal Strauss:Armin Mueller-Stahl (Mortati in the book)

Lieutenant Chartrand:Thure Lindhardt

Cardinal Petrov:Elya Baskin

RAI reporter:Pasquale Cassalia

Swiss Guardsman:Auguste Fredrik

CERN Scientist:Endre Hules

The film rights to this book were acquired in 2003 by Sony along with the rights to
The Da Vinci Code
. Akiva Goldsman was brought in to adapt the novel
Angels & Demons
for the screen. But the filming, due to start in February 2008 was halted by the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike. Instead of a release date in December 2008 the strike pushed the release date to 15 May 2009 and David Koepp was brought in to finish the script.

With
The Da Vinci Code
, director Ron Howard had taken a reverential approach because of the popularity of the book but with
Angels & Demons
he wanted to be more liberal with the adaptation of the story. He wanted a much faster paced action tale rather than the more ponderous story that the earlier film had been.

One key difference was that of the Camerlengo, who was changed from being Italian to Northern Irish, largely to accommodate actor Ewan McGregor.

The character of Leonardo Vetra, Vittoria’s father, is omitted from the film while Cardinal Baggia, the one tipped to be the next Pope, doesn’t die in the film and it is he who shows Langdon the hiding place of the Illuminati. Baggia is elected Pope while in the novel Cardinal Mortati, the Dean of the College, is elected and Baggia dies. The assassin doesn’t die at the hands of Langdon and Vittoria and no relationship develops after Langdon rescues Vittoria in the film whereas it does in the book. The brand that is indefinitely loaned to Langdon for his help at the end of the book which is an ambigram of a combination of the four elements is replaced by Galileo’s Diagramma della Veritatis in the film.

Three weeks of shooting took place in Rome starting on 4 June 2008 under the working title
Obelisk
. The rest of the film was shot at Sony Studios in Culver City California, due to an impending Screen Actors Guild strike and Roman Catholic Church officials in Rome refusing the film makers to shoot any scenes in their churches. This forced them to use different locations such as the
Caserta Palace
for the inside of the Vatican and the
Bibliotheca Angelica
for the Vatican Library.

While the Writers Guild strike had forced Howard to shoot quickly it gave him greater opportunity to use handheld cameras, injecting more energy into the film and giving it a documentary feel.

To replicate the interior of St Peter’s Basilica the area around the crypt beneath St Peter’s baldachin, along with the bottom parts of St Peter’s Statue and the columns, were reproduced on the soundstage and the rest of the structure created digitally in post production.

Allan Cameron, the Production Designer, sent twenty people to the Sistine Chapel to sketch, photograph and enlarge paintings and mosaics for the digital recreations. The Chapel was created to full size in the sound stages but the Sala Regia was built to smaller scale to fit in the soundstage with its 80-foot high ceilings.

Hans Zimmer wrote the original score for
Angels & Demons
, which was released on 22 May 2009 on the Columbia Pictures Industries Inc label. Zimmer developed the track at the end of
The Da Vinci Code
known as ‘Chevaliers de Sangreal’ as Langdon’s main theme in the new film.

Though the Catholic Church has not been as vocal in condemning
Angels & Demons
one Italian priest in Santa Susanna stated they did not want scenes of murder to be associated with the Church. The President of the
Catholic League
, William A. Donohue, said that Catholics should let other Catholics know about the anti-Catholic sentiments in the film. Howard responded by saying that the film wasn’t anti-Catholic because Langdon supported and protected the Church as well as its depiction of the priests who support scientific advances.