India doesn't let 'Da Vinci Code' open
Source: UPI

BOMBAY, India (UPI) -- India's Censor Board has refused to let Sony Pictures' "The Da Vinci Code" open as scheduled Friday. The film was delayed indefinitely because Sony refused the Censor Board's demand that it put disclaimers at the beginning and end of Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's bestseller, the BBC reported Friday. The board wanted Sony to let filmgoers know the thriller was "a work of pure fiction and has no correspondence to historical facts of the Christian religion," a BBC correspondent in Bombay said. Sony maintained it did not need to run anything with the film in addition to the standard legal disclaimer: "The characters and incidents portrayed and the names herein are fictitious, and any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional." The studio released a statement saying it was hopeful the stalemate with the Censor Board would end allowing the release of the Tom Hanks-starring film in India. Copyright 2006 by United Press International