Cracking the 'Code'

摘要

One of the virtues of "The Da Vinci Code," author Dan Brown's gajillion-sell-ing thriller about a Harvard symbologist in hot pursuit of the Holy Grail, is its breathlessness. The novel unfolds over the course of 12 hours, and that's about how long it takes to read. It's fitting, then, that the man spearheading the movie version, producer Brian Grazer, first got wind of the book from the creator of his company's acclaimed TV series "24"— itself an adrenaline rush of real-time pulp fiction. Early in 2003, Joel Surnow read the book, which was popular but not yet a worldwide phenomenon, and thought it would make a terrific story line for "24's" third season. So he asked his boss to look into acquiring the rights. "It quickly be- came clear that we had no chance," Grazer says. Brown had no intention of handing over his book to a mere TV show. Wise move. A few months later Sony paid $6 million for the movie rights—and hired Grazer to produce it. One of Hollywood's shrewdest operators, Grazer, 53, had started out trolling for TV material and ended up piloting the biggest film adaptation since "Harry Potter."