Da Vinci Kodak moment

Sony Pictures is apparently concerned that Christians will be offended by the central premise of the Da Vinci Code which it has hired the venerable Ron Howard/Tom Hanks team to bring to life. The novel's plot involved a long-running Catholic conspiracy to conceal the fact the Jesus boned Mary Magdalene and sired a kid by her, who was supposed to inherit his mojo or something. Apparently Sony is attempting to make this premise "more ambiguous" (I always thought pregnancy, if not paternity, was a pretty binary thing).

What are they afraid of? Didn't 36 million copies of the book sell? That shows some marketing potential. Do they fear that the thumpers' widespread preference for a literal interpretation of the Bible means that Christians think all books are literally true? Or that media concerning Jesus that are? The threat to the Bible's literal truth posed by a work of adventure fiction is similar to the threat posed to the sanctimony of marriage by some gay nuptials: it's all about the inherent insecurities of the besieged.

Or perhaps they fear that the mesmerizing artistry of Howard (the erstwhile "little Opie Cunningham") and Hanks, who once conviced many that Darryl Hannah was really a mermaid.