PROS:
Tom Hanks returns for the third time as Harvard professor Robert Langdon, whose intellect and history knowledge are required to solve an urgent mystery, this one set in Florence, Italy. The previous films in the franchise, 2006’s The Da Vinci Code and 2009’s Angels & Demons, made $217.5 million and $133.3 million, respectively. Adjusted for ticket price inflation, the numbers are even more impressive — about $287.6 million and $160.8 million.
The source novel by Dan Brown was the highest-selling book of 2013, the year it came out. Among the books also in that year’s top 20 bestsellers, which Inferno beat: Catching Fire, Gone Girl, The Fault in Our Stars,Fifty Shades of Grey, and Divergent. All of those film adaptations earned at least $100 million.
This marks the first wide release with Felicity Jones in a starring role since her breakout in 2014’s The Theory of Everything, which earned her a Best Actress nomination.
CONS:
Could Tom Hanks fatigue be setting in? The Robert Langdon character was born in 1964, which would make him 49 years old in the book version of Inferno. Hanks is now 60 and recently became a grandfather. Langdon is most certainly not a grandfather. Could audiences no longer view Hanks as a thriller hero after a certain age, the same way Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone saw large declines in their box office draws over the past decade?
While Angels & Demons made good money, remember that it only sold about 55 percent as many tickets domestically as The Da Vinci Code. While it still earned enough to greenlight a sequel, the fan base for the series could be slipping.