Ron Howard Won't Be Directing 'The Lost Symbol'

Nikki Finke at Deadline: Hollywood is reporting that Ron Howard will not be directing Sony Pictures' big budget version of Dan Brown's novel, The Lost Symbol, after all:

"EXCLUSIVE: Ron Howard directed and produced both of Sony Pictures' films based on Dan Brown's bestselling novels, The Da Vinci Code (in 2006) and Angels & Demons (2009). Now I've learned that the Imagine Entertainment principal will not be directing the next movie based on Brown's 2009 book The Lost Symbol which is a follow-up to the events described in Da Vinci Code. "He wanted to produce this one, not direct," a Sony insider tells me. So Sony Pictures has started looking for a new helmer. Like the two other books made into films, this third one stars Tom Hanks as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon. "Ron told Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton that he was not going to be directing Dan Brown's novels anymore," an insider tells me. "He just didn't want to do that thing over and over, the same character and the same stories." But if you look at Howard's box office track record as a director since his Oscar-winner A Beautiful Mind (2001), the Dan Brown films were his most successful with such wide release movies as Missing, Cinderella Man, and The Dilemma all underperforming. He could use a surefire hit. After all, The Lost Symbol sold one million hardcovers and e-books in the U.S., the UK, and Canada on its first day, making it the fastest selling adult novel in history."

It was reported back in December that Dan Brown has taken over the scripting of the movie, choosing to do the adaptation himself this time. Still no firm release date has been announced, but Summer 2013 seems increasingly likely.