Ron Howard tries to outfox Da Vinci fans

Since bear traps are no longer legal Ron Howard has decided to employ time-honoured tactics, booking everything to do with his adaptation of Dan Brown’s mega-seller The Da Vinci Code under a false production name, The Rose Line. Howard also altered the names on the scripts, signs and furniture on set. Yet the book’s fans continue to track the production across our great capital.

The problem for Howard is that they just see that sort of malarkey as a challenge, and easily rumbled him on the fake title. Foolish, foolish man – of course fans are going to know that, deep breath, at the beginning of the story, when Saunière, the curator of the Louvre, is held at gunpoint, he reveals to his captor that what he seeks is buried in the Church of Saint-Sulpice beneath an obelisk that lies exactly along the ancient "Rose Line" (the former Prime Meridian which passed through Paris before it was redefined to pass through Greenwich). And exhale…

With a heavyweight cast including Tom Hanks as symbologist Robert Langdon, Sir Ian McKellen, Audrey Tautou, Paul Bettany and Jean Reno, The Da Vinci Code’s tale of murder in the Louvre and religious conspiracy is due for release in May 2006.