Dan Brown Takes Over Script For Lost Symbol Movie

The Hollywood Reporter says today that Dan Brown has taken on rewriting the script adaptation of The Lost Symbol himself.

Columbia Pictures is developing the film version of Brown's most recent novel, which was published in 2009 and sold more than a million copies in its first day on shelves. In it, Brown's regular protagonist, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, gets mixed up with the Freemasons in Washington, D.C.

The 2006 adaptation of The Da Vinci Code and the 2009 version of Angels & Demons grossed $1.24 billion at the worldwide box office for Sony. But this is the first time Brown has taken on screenwriting duties. Akiva Goldsman penned Da Vinci and co-wrote Demons with David Koepp.

Oscar-nominated Eastern Promises scribe Steven Knight first took a run at the Symbol screenplay. Although Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment is once again producing, Howard, who directed the first two Brown adaptations, has not committed to directing Symbol. Nor has star Tom Hanks officially come on board to reprise Langdon.

Regardless, given the sure-thing built-in audience, Sony is sure to have Symbol in theaters sooner rather than later. With Men in Black III and the Spider-Man reboot already set for summer 2012, here's betting that Brown's latest is on screens the following summer.

This may be good news for Masons, since Brown's treatment of the fraternity in his novel was positive and almost reverent. If he can keep that same feel through the movie script, we should be very happy boys. But it does sound like it has been booted to a 2013 release date, which makes sense, as Ron Howard has taken on a huge project in the interim, a three picture adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

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