Cracking the code

The Da Vinci Code “is not a reinvention of the novel”. After all, author Dan Brown’s controversial, conspiracy-minded religious thriller has become a global industry — the book has already sold 50 million hardback copies, with close to five million paperback sales in the UK so far. It has inspired reverential bus tours, been denounced by the Vatican and, most recently, been the subject of a high-profile court case.

But the court case is only one of the obstacles the film has had to overcome. Huge pressure was exerted on Sony, the studio making the film, from religious groups who wanted the film to differ from the novel, particularly in its inflammatory theory that for 2,000 years the Catholic Church has been covering up the fact that Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and fathered a daughter, whose bloodline has survived into present-day Europe. [More]