Sir Ian McKellen to star in Da Vinci Code

The casting till date on The Da Vinci Code hasn’t proved entirely popular. But some latest news trickling out of director Ron Howard office was enough to bring back our interest in this project again.

Sir Ian McKellen will play Sir Teabing, a wealthy man who acts as a resource for Langdon even as he shows his own ambitions to uncover the Holy Grail. Sir Ian McKellen is best known as Gandalf the Grey, a character he potrayed in “The Lord of The Ring’ series.

Christopher Eccleston, fresh from reviving Doctor Who in the UK is in negotiations to play the Opus Dei assassin, Silas.

Alfred Molina will play zealous Bishop Arigarosa, who’s keenly interested in the sleuthing activities of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and cryptographer Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou).

Also, the trustees of Rosslyn Chapel have agreed to allow filming there for the closing pages of the book.

In the Da Vinci Code, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. Solving the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci - clues visible for all to see, and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion - an actual secret society. In a breathless race through Paris, London and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who appears to work for Opus Dei - a clandestine, Vatican-sanctioned Catholic organization believed to have long plotted to seize the Priory’s secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory’s secret - and a stunning historical truth - will be lost forever.