Controversies get people thinking: Dan Brown

The movie adaptation of Dan Brown's novel Angels & Demons might have run into trouble with religious organisations but the best selling author of The Da Vinci Code believes that a "controversy gets people thinking".

'Angels & Demons' has been directed by A Beautiful Mind' fame Ron Howard and stars Tom Hanks as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon. The film, which is a prequel to The Da Vinci Code, is being released in India by Sony Pictures on May 15.

"I'm still surprised The Da Vinci Code became as controversial as it was. Sure, there will be plenty of controversy around Angels & Demons, but I don't see that as a bad thing. Controversy gets people thinking," Brown said in an email interview from Los Angeles.

The Vatican had banned the shooting of the film inside its churches. The Catholics in India have also demanded a ban on the film saying it "confuses fiction with truth".

Brown has just finished writing his fifth novel The Lost Symbol, which will be published on September 15.

The controversial author, who has already watched the movie adaptation of Angels & Demons,considers it better than The Da Vinci Code.

"It's fantastic. Angels & Demons' is a much more cinematic novel than The Da Vinci Code, and this fundamental difference really shows through on film. Angels & Demons is, at its core, a race against a ticking time bomb, so the story already has built in pace.