Broken In Brief: Dan Brown really mails in his latest novel

EXETER—With the impending film release of Angels & Demons, a Ron Howard film based on the 2000 novel of the same name, sources reveal that the book’s author, Dan Brown, has hastily put together a slapdash new novel to capitalize on the approaching blockbuster.

The novel, titled the Gilgamesh Diversion, centers on Brown’s famous Robert Langdon character as he attempts to navigate the dark and mysterious world of Hollywood in an attempt to sell a spec script to an enigmatic, crippled former child star-turned director. Along the way, Langdon encounters the Bilderberg Group, a secret cabal of Jewish mystics, a snotty guard at the Columbia Pictures lot, blindingly obvious puzzles, an evil one-eyed mulatto, famous structures that are also obvious puzzles, reams of misappropriated and inaccurate history, and enough third-rate conspiracy theories to send a shiver of delight up the leg of a Ron Paul supporter.

“I’m not gonna say the DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons were master works, but he really mailed this one in,” observed Columbia executive Max Kohler. “When I read that the Bilderburg Group and Judaism were conspiring together in an attempt to keep the Langdon character from getting $10 million up front, a cut of the back end profits and foreign gross, and an executive producer credit on the film, it all kind of fell apart for me. It almost made me not want to give Danny $10 million up front, a cut of the back end profits and foreign gross, and an executive producer credit for the movie rights of this book. Still though, this thing is going to make a fortune.”

Columbia hopes to have Akiva Goldsman begin work on the script and have the film prepped for a summer 2011 release as soon as Ron Howard finds a small, heartfelt movie he’s interested in that Columbia won’t greenlight unless Howard agrees to direct another Dan Brown film.