EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures and Imagine Entertainment have firmed an April start in Italy on Inferno, the third installment based on the Dan Brown novel series best known for the blockbuster book and film The Da Vinci Code. The studio has closed its deals with Tom Hanks to reprise his role as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and for Ron Howard to direct and Brian Grazer to produce with Howard. The script is by David Koepp.

In Inferno, Langdon awakens in an Italian hospital with amnesia. He teams up with Sienna Brooks, the doctor he hopes will help him recover his memories and prevent a madman from releasing a global plague connected to Dante’s Inferno.

The previous film installment of the Langdon franchise, 2009’s Angels & Demons, based on the first book in the series, grossed $486 million worldwide. They skipped over the third book in Brown’s series, The Lost Symbol.

Beyond the youth-targeted superhero franchises spawned from Spider-Man and 21 Jump Street, the Langdon films have been a reliable adult franchise with global appeal. Sony launches its next one of those with the Antoine Fuqua-directed The Equalizer, starring Denzel Washington.

That film premieres in Toronto, and a sequel to the Richard Wenk-scripted pic already is well along. Hanks, Howard and Grazer are repped by CAA. Sony’s Michael De Luca and Andrea Giannetti will oversee for the studio.