The movie version of "The Da Vinci Code" was supposed to be the 800 pound gorilla of the summer movie season. While it certainly hasn't disappointed at the box office (few $200 million movies could be categorized as "disappointments"), it hasn't carried the weight the pundits predicted from the 40 million copies of the book that have been sold (my guess is that a good number of them were bought as "gifts" by anti-Christians trying to convert their believing relatives away from their faith, frankly...and folks say atheists aren't evangelists...but I digress). In fact, not only is it not the top movie of 2006, but it officially dropped to number 4.

Of course, after "Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest" made its phenomenal debut last weekend, I think the smart money was on it taking the crown for the yearly box office champ. But "XMen: The Last Stand" passed DVC some weeks back, and, this weekend, "Cars" headed past it was well, meaning that DVC will produce at best a 4th place finish at the box office for the year. Respectable, yes, and certainly lucrative enough to ensure the production of more Dan Brown novels into big screen movies, but hardly the "revolution" a few die hard Dan Brown acolytes seemed to predict.