Behind The Da Vinci Code

Howard has revisited classic thrillers with spiritual elements, such as The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby, as well as movies in which action springs from conversation, as in All the President's Men. His goal is to duplicate the experience of reading the book—no small task, considering that Brown's tale unfolds in real time over the course of 20 hours and that the movie will run less than three. Plenty will be omitted, but Howard insists nothing dear has been lost. He's made a believer out of Brown. "The novelist is always the adaptation's most skeptical audience," the press-shy author said in a statement to NEWSWEEK, "but I think this movie will blow people away. I truly believe moviegoers will come out of the theater feeling like they've just watched the novel."

The Da Vinci Code is a different kind of project for Grazer and Howard, whose previous films, including Apollo 13, The Grinch and A Beautiful Mind, have grossed billions around the world and collected nine Oscars. The two usually develop their own projects for Imagine and shop them to a studio; this time, Sony brought them in as hired guns. Grazer tried to buy the rights to The Da Vinci Code for Imagine, with the idea of using the book as a template for the third season of his company's hit TV series, 24, but he got outfoxed by another bidder. "I just didn't know the right people," he says. "I didn't know Dan's people—the book people."