Robert Langdon

On the data. Six novels, and for the books the question of where to start has a simple answer: publication order is also story order. Angels and Demons came out in 2000 and is the first case; The Da Vinci Code in 2003 refers back to it, describing Langdon's night in Rome as something in his past, and every later book treats the earlier ones the same way. The references only run backwards, so no book is unreadable out of order, but starting with The Da Vinci Code means reading a callback to a story you have not had yet. The reason so many people ask is that The Da Vinci Code was the breakout, sold vastly more, and was filmed first, so it is the one people meet first. The films are where the order genuinely breaks. Sony filmed The Da Vinci Code in 2006 because it was the book everyone was buying, then filmed Angels and Demons in 2009. Rather than present the second film as a prequel, the script rewrote it as a sequel: in the film Langdon is already notorious for the Grail book, and the Vatican summons him partly because of it. Watching the films in book order therefore contradicts the films themselves. All three star Tom Hanks and are directed by Ron Howard. The Lost Symbol, the third novel, has never been filmed. Sony developed it as the next film after Angels and Demons and then dropped it in favour of Inferno, which is the fourth novel, so the film series runs books two, one, four with a hole in the middle. Inferno the film also changes the novel's ending substantially; the book turns on the fact that the plague has already been released and cannot be undone, and the film does not leave it there. Origin, the fifth novel, has never been adapted at all. The Lost Symbol did eventually reach the screen, but as a Peacock series in 2021 rather than a film, and as a prequel with Ashley Zukerman playing a much younger Langdon than Hanks. It ran ten episodes from 16 September to 18 November 2021 and was cancelled on 24 January 2022. It is not a continuation of the films and does not fit their chronology, which is why it carries no story position here. Neither does the sixth adaptation attempt: Netflix has ordered an eight episode series based on The Secret of Secrets, the 2025 novel set in Prague, with Carlton Cuse as showrunner, Morgan Spector as Langdon and Rebecca Hall as Katherine Solomon. That makes Katherine Solomon a lead character in two unconnected screen continuities, since she is also the co-lead of the Peacock series. The Netflix series has no announced release date; the year shown here is the year it was cast and is not a premiere date, and the episode count is the order size rather than a confirmed schedule. Dan Brown's other novels are not part of this. Digital Fortress from 1998, Deception Point from 2001 and the children's book Wild Symphony from 2020 have no connection to Langdon and are not listed. On story positions: the books carry the clean numbering. The films are placed against them, with Angels and Demons sitting between The Da Vinci Code and Inferno rather than before them, because that is where the film's own script puts it. No film or book states a calendar year for these events, so the numbers here are sequence positions, not dates.

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