Da Vinci No 2 at global box office

Los Angeles: All the protests and all the bad reviews could not prevent The Da Vinci Code from recording a $224 million worldwide opening, the second-biggest debut ever at the global box office, its distributor said on Sunday.

The controversial adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling novel, the story of a Vatican cover-up involving Jesus Christ and his supposed offspring, sold about $77 million worth of tickets at movie theaters in the United States and Canada during its first three days, according to Columbia Pictures.

Box-office watchers had predicted a North American opening of between $50 million and $80 million for the most eagerly awaited movie of the year.

The biggest North American opening this year had been $68 million for Ice Age: The Meltdown seven weeks ago.

However, The Da Vinci Code numbers were still far from the $115 million record held by 2002's Spider-Man.

The Da Vinci Code earned about $147 million overseas, the biggest international opening ever. The previous record was last year's Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith with $145 million, Columbia said.

The total haul of $224 million ranks number two behind the $253 million tally for the Star Wars movie, the studio said. Columbia Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp., released the $125 million film in 90 foreign markets, following its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday.

The strong sales came despite (or because of) an onslaught of protests and publicity not seen since another religious movie, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, earned $84 million domestically during its first weekend in February 2004.

It grossed $612 million worldwide. Brown's fictional premise that Jesus Christ had a child with Mary Magdalene and that their bloodline survived through the ages, was a huge hit at bookstores, with more than 40 million copies sold around the world.

However, some Christians, particularly Catholics, were angered by the story and have mounted a high-profile offensive against director Ron Howard's movie adaptation, which stars Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou.

A Catholic lay organisation, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, took out full-page ads in USA Today on Friday calling for worshipers to stage prayer vigils outside at least 1,000 theaters nationwide.

Other church groups have welcomed the opportunity to use the film as a starting point for discussion about the Bible, as has American Atheists, which says the same level of scrutiny applied to the book and film also should be used to question all other religious claims.

On the heels of the Cannes premiere of The Da Vinci Code, critics joined the chorus of naysayers, overwhelmingly lambasting it as "grim," "unwieldy" and "plodding."

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It did get a respectable review from America's best-known movie critic, Roger Ebert, who called it "preposterously entertaining."

Sony, the film's producer Imagine Entertainment, and the movie's stars have stressed that the movie is merely entertainment. And moviegoers appeared to agree.

"The book became more than a book and the movie became more than a movie," said Valerie Van Galder, Columbia's president of domestic marketing.

"It became a perfect storm," she added.