The Da Vinci Code opens the 59th Festival De Cannes

"The Da Vinci Code", directed by Ron Howard and produced by Brian Grazer and John Calley for Columbia Pictures and Imagine Entertainment, will open the Festival de Cannes (Cannes Film Festival) on Wednesday May 17, 2006. The film will be presented Out of Competition.

The movie was adapted from Dan Brown's esoteric thriller with more than 30 million copies sold throughout the world. Top billing goes to Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Jean Reno with Paris's Louvre and Saint-Sulpice Church among the star sets of both the novel and film.

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) 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. While working to solve 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 - 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 whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others. In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's ancient secret - and an explosive historical truth - will be lost forever.