MUMBAI: Columbia Pictures and Imagine Entertainment’s Angels & Demons will be released in India and worldwide by Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) on 15 May.

A Brian Grazer & John Calley production, Angels & Demons is the prequel to The Da Vinci Code and is based upon the bestselling novel by Dan Brown.

Tom Hanks reprises his role as Harvard religious expert Robert Langdon, who once again finds that forces with ancient roots are willing to stop at nothing, even murder, to advance their goals. The film also casts Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgård, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, and Armin Mueller-Stahl. Ron Howard has directed Angels & Demons and also co-produced it in association with Grazer and Calley.

"When I read Angels & Demons, I was really engrossed by the idea of the Illuminati. This four hundred year old secret society, said to include people like Galileo and Bernini. What happened to them? Were they really crushed? Did they really leave us? There are those who believe that the Illuminati have survived as an organization and are with us in secret today, influencing our everyday lives, government policy decisions, and corporate strategies," says Howard.