Howard’s “Angels and Demons” Called to a Halt

On last week’s show we reported that director Ron Howard was on the fast track to getting his sequel (actually a prequel) to “The Da Vinci Code” called “Angels and Demons” into production despite the continuing writer’s strike.

Well, that was Ron’s hope, but now it seems that, like so many other productions, this highly anticipated second film based on the novel by Dan Brown has fallen apart under the weight of the strike as well. In fact, it has become the first official major film production casualty of the strike.

The film will see the return of Tom Hanks as the lead character Robert Langdon whenever it finally goes back into production. To say the least, Sony Pictures, the main financial backer of the film is a tad upset over this development because it was expected that screenwriter Akiva Goldsman would have had all the kinks in the script ironed out before the strike began on November 5. Goldsman did meet the November 1 deadline, however, the script was loaded with all kinds of problems leading to this decision to postpone production.

“While the filmmakers and the studio feel the screenplay is very strong, we do not believe it is the fully realized production draft required of this ambitious project,” a Sony spokesperson told Variety. “At this time, there is no new start date for ‘Angels & Demons,’ but we are setting a release date of May 15, 2009, and are hopeful to deliver the movie worldwide to theaters on that date. We do not expect any other film on our 2008 slate to be affected.”

Howard was originally set to begin shooting this coming February for a December 25, 2008 release date.

There may be other factors that all studios will have to consider for future projects that haven’t gone to post-production by June 2008 — both the Screen Actors Guild (SGA) and the Directors Guild of America (DGA) could possibly strike this coming summer if negotiations between them and the movie studios and TV networks don’t work out.