Bibliophiles across the world woke up to great news on Wednesday morning: Dan Brown is writing another book! The novel, a continuation of the Robert Langdon series, will release in 2017 and is expected to be a world bestseller like all his six novels so far have been.
And if there is going to be a Robert Langdon book, a Tom Hanks movie adaptation will obviously follow. Of the four books written by Brown in the series, two have been made into highly successful movies with the third one, Inferno releasing next week.
But here is a question: If Inferno was criticised for being the least thrilling and ill-conceived of all Dan Brown books, why is there no film on either Digital Fortress or Deception Point?
{{/usCountry}}But here is a question: If Inferno was criticised for being the least thrilling and ill-conceived of all Dan Brown books, why is there no film on either Digital Fortress or Deception Point?
{{/usCountry}}Digital Fortress was written in 1998 and is an edge-of-the-seat thriller about a woman cryptographer and her fiance, trying to save NSA from a fatal breach in security, inflicted by a frustrated NSA employee. The breach will let any one in the world get his hands on even the biggest government secrets.
Deception Point (2001) is about NASA making the biggest discovery in the history of mankind at a time when the public wants it completely shut down. Both these books are epic in their scale. They are full of adventure, awe, assassins and armed fights but Ron Howard would still rather make another Robert Langdon movie based on a below average book rather than pick these up.
Are these novels ignored because their protagonists are females? Sure, Tom Hanks is too good to let go and enough to pull audiences into theatres merely with his star power, but Rachel Sexton and Susan Fletcher also deserve a chance. They are both intelligent characters and if portrayed by the perfect actor, they too can work wonders.
Sure Robert Langdon walks us through the history of art and architecture, makes us solve cryptic riddles and question the things we believe in but so does Susan Fletcher. She is a cryptographer, trying to figure out the code that will stop the Digital Fortress (a firewall that protects NSA’s data) from crashing. The novel takes you through the functioning of the NSA and how fragile the entire system can be.
Sure, Angels and Demons (2000) was a great book and a good movie but that was the first book written by Brown in the series. The quality has only deteriorated over time and it is maybe time that we and more importantly, Brown accepts that we don’t need another Robert Langdon adventure. And while Ron Howard maybe the happiest man on Earth after learning that another book is in the offing, we wish he gets hold of these other two novels and at least entertains the idea of a Digital Fortress/Deception Point movie.
Follow @htshowbiz for more