Friday, April 07, 2006

Those who Benefited from The Da Vinci Code Lawsuit

Many Strange Culture posts have covered the Da Vinci Code Lawsuit put forth by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh claiming that Dan Brown's book stole their ideas (Baigent and Leigh wrote book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail").

Well today the Judge rejected the claims brought forward in the suit (news story here). And while I'm sure Dan Brown is relieved, I have from the beginning seeing this as a giant publicity stunt.

Allow me to outline who received benefits from this rejected lawsuit:


  • Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" has already sold over 40 million copies world wide, and 500,000 copies were sold last week with it's paperback release, one of the largest ever. This is good for Dan Brown and Random House. (Even the associate press in this story attribute the legal controversy to boosting the already successful books sales. See it in this story here)
  • Ron Howard, Dan Brown, Todd Hallowell, Columbia Pictures, Imagine Entertainment, Sony Pictures Releasing will all benefit from the free publicity the film received. Although many wondered and speculated, the film will still come out July 8th with Tom Hanks playing Robert Langdon.
  • Baigent and Leigh's book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" is now 24 years old but is selling 7,000 copies a week in Britain and even more in the United States. (See my first post in February realizing the Baigent/Leigh publicity benefit here).
  • Baigent also has a new book coming out “The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History.” He is receiving free publicity in connection with this law suit as well. (To see more on the Jesus Papers you can read my post and criticism in my post here).

Also read another AP story about the Da Vinci code that came out today. The Christian Council of Korea is filing a court injection with Sony Pictures Releasing of Korea to stop movie distributors from showing the film. There claim "it defiles the sanctity of Jesus Christ and distorts facts." You can read that story here.

The top picture is of Dan Brown, the second picture is Michael Baigent.

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3 comments:

poppedculture said...

We do seem to have a similar take on Da Vinci (and other topics). Keep blogging!
http://culturepopped.blogspot.com

untamed said...

dude, I love reading your posts! It's good to see a Christian perspective on things and not just the world's. Keep at it!

  said...

Yep, how true! And whatever extra sales the parties net will more than cover their legal expenses.