Tom Hanks has no qualms about playing the role of symbologist Robert Langdon for the third time. Hanks is set to return to the big screen in the movie adaptation of Dan Brown's 2013 mystery thriller, "Inferno."
"... As a selfish actor, I don't mind playing the smartest guy in the room. I don't get to play the toughest guy, I don't get to play the best-looking or ... the tallest, but I do get to play the smartest guy in the room as Robert Langdon," the actor said during a recent press event for the movie, Reuters reports.
Hanks doesn't seem to mind, and clearly enjoys reprising his role. According to the actor, he liked the character and the movie because both have "a degree of mystery and at the same time a great amount of predictability."
"Inferno" is the third Dan Brown movie under Sony Pictures. The other two movies, "The Da Vinci Code" released in 2006, and "Angels and Demons" in 2009 also starred Tom Hanks. Filming for the upcoming movie has already started recently, mainly in the historical city of Florence.
In 2013, Dan Brown released "Inferno", the latest book in his Robert Langdon series. In "Inferno", Dante Alighieri's literary masterpiece, "Divine Comedy" served as the clues that Langdon must solve in order to save the world from an impending deadly artificial plague.
Just months after the book's release, Sony immediately announced that they are to produce a movie adaptation based on "Inferno", Huffington Post reported. With the announcement came the confirmation that "The Lost Symbol" movie adaptation may no longer push through, despite the buzz in 2012 that "Hunger Games: Mockingjay" writer Danny Strong has written its screenplay.
"Inferno" also stars British actress Felicity Jones as Sienna Brooks and French actor Omar Sy as Christoph Bruder. Last March, actor Ben Foster was reported to be in negotiations to play the role of the book's villain Bertrand Zobrist, a smart and powerful scientist who wants to solve the world's problem of overpopulation by releasing a deadly plague, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Ron Howard also returns to the directorial chair in "Inferno". Howard previously directed "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons".
"This one, I think, is much more modern, it's edgier, the crisis that we are dealing with is very real and present and something that people talk about, and it suggests a kind of an urgency and a psychological focus that creates another type of tension. It's a bit more modern cinematically in its approach," the blockbuster director said.
Sony previously announced that "Inferno" will be released before the year ends. However, the movie's release date has been pushed to 2016.