"The DaVinci Code” is popular in that wildly sick way that only Star Wars is. I know this because people come here in droves looking for information on it. The couple of threads we have on the book on our message board pull in ridiculous amounts of Google traffic, and at least once a week we get a post or I get an email from some gibbering idiot with a complex treatise on why the book must be real. Get a grip people! The bright side here, is that “The DaVinci Code” is one of the most purchased and least read books on the planet. The few people who have read it are just ridiculously rabid. The rest of us buy it, get bored after a couple of pages, and leave it sitting on our coffee table. It’s just a work of fiction people. Relax. You’re on the verge of becoming Scientologists. I wonder if Dan Brown has started construction on a Church, perhaps with an attached Potato Bar. It worked for Hubbard!

Gibbering idiots aren’t the only people in love with this make-believe story. Ron Howard is in the middle of making a movie version of it, complete with a star-studded cast. Today, Variety has announced that Sony Pictures has brought two more big names into the picture, Spider-Man’s Alfred Molina and Lord of the Rings’/X-Men’s Sir Ian McKellan. McKellan has been cast as someone called Sir Teabing, a wealthy competitor of the book’s main character. Molina is taking on the role of a Holy Grail hunting Bishop named Arigarosa.

With a cast already sporting the likes of Tom Hanks, Jean Reno, and Audrey Tautou it looks like The DaVinci Code has a serious head of steam. Watch for it in theaters May 2006.