It’s all change behind the keyboard for Sony’s latest planned outing for historical code-cracking prof Robert Langdon, as the studio has drafted in a brand new writer to bash out a script based on novelist Dan Brown’s** The Lost Symbol**. And while the person they’ve picked has never worked on a film screenplay before, he is fairly familiar with the source material since, er, he wrote it.
Yep, Dan Brown himself is now the man charged with turning his book into a script. While the studio hired Dirty Pretty Things/Eastern Promises scribe Steven Knight to figure out the first draft, it’s now letting Brown have a go. The previous movies were either written by Akiva Goldsman alone (The Da Vinci Code) or saw him sharing the job with David Koepp (Angels and Demons).
Symbol, which was published last year, has Langdon (played on screen in the first two films by Tom Hanks) probing into the dark, dangerous secrets of the Freemasons in Washington DC.
But while we’re sure Sony is looking to keep the Dan Brown cash cow mooing away, there’s still the small matter of having Hanks or director Ron Howard sign on to the new pic. Howard is slightly busy developing his epic adaptation of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series and Hanks has been off directing Larry Crowne and agreeing to work with Kathryn Bigelow. Expect the studio to start backing up those dump trucks full of dosh soon enough to secure Symbol for a release date before too long. No pressure, then, Dan…