Angels is ready to take flight.
Columbia Pictures is plotting a February start date for Angels & Demons, Ron Howard's follow-up to the blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, with Tom Hanks back in his as a conspiracy-unraveling professor.
Dan Brown's 2000 whodunit was actually set before The Da Vinci Code. The fast-paced mystery-thriller takes place over the course of one day and focuses on the clash between religion and science, this time as Harvard professor Robert Langdon (Hanks) uses his code-cracking expertise to uncover a scheme by the secret society of the Illuminati to blow up Vatican City.
According to Variety, Columbia parent Sony Pictures was so psyched by the international box-office success of The Da Vinci Code ($758 million in worldwide ticket sales) that the studio snapped up the rights to Angels & Demons and hired Oscar-winning scribe Akiva Goldsman to transform it into a sequel. Goldsman, who will reportedly make seven figures for his efforts, also adapted The Da Vinci Code.
Brian Grazer and John Calley will produce Angels with Howard and Goldsman, all of whom have their work cut out for them.
For one, Goldsman has a tight deadline, given the looming writer's strike expected to get underway Nov. 1.
Another hurdle facing producers will be wrapping principal photography before a potential strike by actors and directors in June.
Complicating matters, Howard will also be pulling double duty during production—shooting Angels & Demons by day and overseeing postproduction on his big-screen adaptation of Peter Morgan's acclaimed play Frost/Nixon by night.
This time around, despite the Church-centric plot, Angels & Demons isn't expected to generate the same kind of firestorm as its predecessor, though critics have called into question the accuracy of Brown's depiction of Vatican procedures.
If all goes according to plan, Angels & Demons should arrive in theaters by summer 2009.