While the massive appeal of the Robert Brown novel “The Da Vinci Code” still baffles me, seeing how it is extremely poorly written and wouldn’t even satisfy a high school creative writing final the film and novel, nonetheless, are hot topics and it seems the Louvre museum is on board.
Reuters reported today that France will allow director Ron Howard to shoot scenes in the famed Louvre museum for the film adaptation featuring Tom Hanks as Professor Robert Langdon which is scheduled to start shooting in May.
A spokesman for the Culture Ministry told Reuters, “Yes, it is scheduled to go ahead. There is no problem.”
The article goes on to say that a production team has already visited the Louvre to select locations in its Grand Gallery, where the opening of the novel is set.
Not only has the book gotten people to start reading, as if that was a chore, it also has increased French tourism as there is now a side industry of specialized tours of Paris exploring the book’s locations and the theories surrounding the work of Leonardo da Vinci, whose most famous painting — the Mona Lisa — hangs in the Louvre. Has anyone told these people that this is a fictional book?
France wants to attract film crews to its monuments and museums to boost tourism and provide jobs for thousands of local show business workers, who staged protests at the Cannes film festival last year over cuts to their welfare benefits.
