Warring With Angels & Demons
When The Da Vinci Code came out in theaters in 2006, Catholic leaders around the world called for a boycott because of what the story implied about the nature of Christ's divinity. So when the sequel to Dan Brown's blockbuster began filming soon thereafter, the Vatican was none too pleased. In fact, director Ron Howard said the church interfered with his efforts to get permits to shoot certain scenes in Rome and refused to allow filming in some of the Vatican City's holiest sites, even saying that he couldn't film shots of Rome where there were churches in the background. Two months before the movie opened, rumors began to swirl that the church would publicly boycott Angels & Demons. But church officials backed off, fearing that a call for people not to see the film would merely spark the opposite effect. Finally, they settled upon a strongly worded statement published in the official Vatican newspaper, declaring that they "cannot approve" of the movie.