Ron Howard outing gets the opening slot at Cannes

Originally posted March 10, 2006.

Despite the ongoing lawsuit, “The Da Vinci Code”, directed by Ron Howard , is still slated to open the Festival de Cannes on Wednesday May 17, 2006. The film will be presented Out of Competition.

The Da Vinci Code was adapted from Dan Brown’s esoteric thriller with more than 30 million copies sold throughout the world. Top billing goes to Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Jean Reno with Paris’s Louvre and Saint-Sulpice Church among the star sets of both the novel and film.

Ron Howard first came to Cannes for Willow (1988), followed by Far and Away (1992) and more recently Ed TV (1999).

The Da Vinci Code will be released in French theatres on the same day as its premiere at Cannes, and on Friday the 19th in its world release.

The Festival de Cannes will run from Wednesday May 17th to Sunday May 28, 2006.

Bloodline of Christ

The Da Vinci Code follows symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu when they become involved in a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus Christ having been married to Mary Magdalene. The title of the novel refers to the discovery of a murder victim in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body and a pentagram drawn on his chest in his own blood.

The novel explores an alternative religious history, whose central plot point is that the Merovingian kings of France were descended from the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. These ideas had been explored by Clive Prince in The Templar Revelation (1997) and books by Margaret Starbird. The book also refers to The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982). Dan Brown has since stated that it was not used as research material for his book.