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‘Inferno’ Director Ron Howard Reveals Reason For 7-Year Wait For Another Robert Langdon Movie

By Erika Miranda
Published on: 14:52 PST, Aug 15, 2016

Inferno director Ron Howard reveals the reason why Dan Brown’s well-loved character and Harvard professor of iconology and symbology made his fans wait seven years before returning to the silver screen.

Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Howard said that the fans’ long wait was for a good reason, unveiling why he needed a break after doing Angels and Demons which also features Robert Langdon.

According to Howard, none of them including Tom Hanks who played Robert Langdon in all movie adaptations of Dan Brown’s best-selling novels were in contract to do a series.

“We’re not cranking out a series. It’s about making a movie when we all believed and agreed we had something exciting, fun, and worthy to share.”

“Inferno” is the fourth book in Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series but the movie adaptation that Howard and Hanks are working on is just the third one, which begs the question as to why they did not do a film version of “The Lost Symbol.”

Last month, news broke about why the Inferno director decided to skip the Browns’ third book “The Lost Symbol.”

“It’s great material, but it felt like, coming close on the heels of Angels and Demons and Da Vinci Code, that thematically and tonally, it might feel a little bit too much like the other books, at that particular moment,” Cinema Blend quoted him saying.

At the time, he also revealed to the outlet that they initially planned to create a film for the third book and had even written scripts for it which apparently did not work out because they “just never could just internally crack it.”

Now, talking to Entertainment Weekly, Howard explained that while “The Lost Symbol” was a great novel, it did not give them that “Eureka!” moment when they could say in all honesty that the film could be a hit.

Because of that, Howard decided to proceed with the production of Inferno, which he hopes will make fans remember the very reason why he and Hanks decided to begin the Robert Langdon projects in the first place.

Howard described Inferno as something that “felt fresh,” a significant characteristic of the story that should make a fun production and a good opportunity to challenge Hanks’ acting skills.

“It felt like a fun, fascinating performance opportunity for Tom …the fact that Langdon is part of the mystery and not just an observer. He’s really in the mix that gives it a psychological thriller component that was never really in the DNA of the previous movies,” he explained.

The Inferno director also noted how the fourth Robert Langdon novel emitted that kind of historical feel that gave Howard an opportunity to experience “all kinds of vivid cool moments.”

Howard said that what got him mostly hooked to the project was how Dante Alighieri defined hell for Western and Christian civilizations while creating an entirely new horror genre thanks to “his vivid descriptions of the punishments of the sinner.”

“It’s everything you’ve seen repeated in every great shock moment in a cool horror film.”

Inferno follows the story of Harvard University professor and world-renowned symbologist Robert Langdon who finds himself in a quest to stop a threat of human extinction via a global genocide scheme initiated by a mad man.

Langdon then finds himself at the center of the mystery as he tries to recall bits and pieces of memories he lost that revolve around Dante Alighieri’s classic poem “The Divine Comedy.”

This Sony Pictures film written by Indiana Jones 5 scriptwriter David Koepp is set to hit theaters October 28, 2016 starring Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, Felicity Jones as Dr. Sienna Brooks, Omar Sy, Ben Foster, and Irrfan Khan as ‘The Provost.’

[Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Sony]

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