Box office boost for Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code movie has followed the bestselling success of the Dan Brown novel on which it was based, taking £119 million around the world in its opening weekend.

Its performance in the first three days has only been matched once before in cinematic history, with Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith having taken £135 million following its release a year ago.

The film, starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou, appears to have done much better outside the US despite taking $77 million to top the American box office. Throughout much of Europe it dwarfed previous opening records, confounding the expectations of cinema pundits who had branded it as dull and unappealing.

Instead cinemagoers chose to ignore the negative verdicts of critics, confirming that the popularity of the story has overcome accusations of the film's pedestrian and clunky storyline.

Dan Brown's bestselling novel, which has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, tells the story of a conspiracy at the heart of the Catholic church in which Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene.

Its popularity, which cultural commentators believe reflects a rising interest in religion in the UK, has been tapped into by the big-screen version on a scale many had failed to predict.

The Da Vinci Code, the latest in a series of blockbusting adaptations of literary works, ranging from the Lord Of The Rings trilogy to the Chronicles Of Narnia, is by far the biggest film of 2006 so far, beating off competition from Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible III and the second Ice Age film.

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