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"Da Vinci" Poster Draws Ire
It's just as well, really. After allegations of plagiarism and blasphemy, the last thing The Da Vinci Code wants to tempt is a smiting.
The Italian Interior Ministry has agreed to remove a giant movie poster promoting the upcoming film from the outside of a Rome church after several clergyman voiced outrage over the poster's presence.
"The Da Vinci Code is a clever piece of commercial exploitation. Fine. But sticking a huge advert on the façade of a church is blatant provocation," Monsignor Marco Frisina, a top official at the Roman diocese, told Italian reporters Monday, per the Associated Press.
The poster, which was up for less than three weeks and covered scaffolding running the length of St. Pantaleo church while the building underwent restoration, featured only the face of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting, the film's title and its release date.
Reverend Marco Fibbi, a spokesman for the Rome diocese, told the AP that it wasn't the poster's images that was "causing a problem," but what the poster was promoting.
"This movie is not reputed to be particularly appreciated by ecclesiastic circles," he said.
"It advertises something that is against Christ and against the Church," St. Pantaleo rector the Rev. Adolfo Garcia Duran told the wire service.
While posters and advertisements appearing on scaffolding are commonplace in Rome--as in the States--the coupling of a Da Vinci Code promotion and a Catholic Church is an odd one.
Since the book's release in March 2003, the Catholic community has denounced it. The blockbuster novel not only puts forth the theory that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and spawned a line of descendants, a theory that directly counters Catholic teachings, but also that the Vatican worked with the conservative religious sect Opus Dei to cover up the story.
The country's interior ministry, which owns the church and brokered the deal to promote the upcoming Tom Hanks film, agreed to have the poster removed within the next few days to stave off the wrath of clergyman and any disconcerted worshippers.
"We ask that at least places of worship be respected and that the choice of the publicity be agreed with the parish," Frisina said.
The promotional mishap is the latest in a long line of hiccups in the run up to the film's release.
Earlier this month, author Dan Brown was cleared of plagiarism charges brought by two British writers claiming the novelist cribbed the premise of his bestseller from a nearly two-decade-old work. It's just one of three similar charges that have been leveled against Brown and which have threatened to postpone the release of Ron Howard's big screen adaptation. None of the allegations, however, has stuck.
Last week, Opus Dei petitioned Sony, the film's distributor, to add a disclaimer to the movie, which the sect says it's portrayed as a secretive cabal of murderous monks who drug people, lie and steal as much for money as for God.
In a sermon given on Good Friday during a service in which Pope Benedict XVI was a guest, a Vatican priest denounced the book and film as "pseudo-historic" works aimed at undermining the Church's authority.
Barring any last-minute litigation, The Da Vinci Code is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival May 17 and will go into wide release May 19.
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