The Devil Is In The Details

The devil is in the details:

It seems that the latest big Hollywood entertainment vehicle will pass this speed bump into movie immortality.

With little or no evidence, writers are fighting over the copyright claims of religious “Historical Conjecture”.

On this basis alone, “The Da Vinci Code” should be vetted for every detail and suspected at every turn.

This From Reuters -

"The Da Vinci Code" copyright case winds up
Sun Mar 19, 2006 6:37 AM ET
By Mike Collett-White

LONDON (Reuters) - A court case in which two historians accuse Dan Brown of copying their work in his novel "The Da Vinci Code" is due to finish on Monday, ending one of the most closely watched copyright claims of recent years.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh wrote "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail", a work of historical conjecture published in 1982, which shares some of the same themes as Brown's best-selling religious thriller.
--
Both books raise the possibility that Jesus had a child by Mary Magdalene, she fled to France after the Crucifixion and Christ's bloodline survives to this day. They also associate Magdalene with the Holy Grail.

Authors warn that should the historians succeed, there would be serious implications for fiction writers who have always incorporated other people's ideas and research into their works.

Legal experts say the claimants face an uphill task to protect general ideas. "You would hamper artistic creativity if you couldn't write a novel that theorizes about a conspiracy theory," said Boston-based intellectual property lawyer Edward Naughton of Holland & Knight.
--
"If it were otherwise the dissemination and discussion of history, science, religion and like topics would be stultified. Creativity of novelists, TV producers and film makers would be stymied," he (Random House's lawyer John Baldwin) said.
Read All>>

Again, these people are arguing over the potential of delivering a conspiracy theory ... FACTUALLY!

This view of seperating fact from fiction found on the FAQ's page on a webite put up by Sony Pictures (the studio responsible for making "The Da Vinci Code" into a movie) to give their entertainment effort cover -

Question:

Why was this site created?

Answer:

While The Da Vinci Code is an entirely fictional thriller, the story obviously touches on religious issues that concern many Christians. The Da Vinci Dialogue grew out of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s desire to respect those concerns by providing a forum where a wide variety of respected religious scholars could discuss some of the serious questions the movie may raise.