Tom Hanks brought back to face "Angels & Demons"

Audrey Tautou and Tom Hanks in Columbia Pictures' The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Yes, Robert Langdon will still be the same man you saw onscreen in "The Da Vinci Code" when he is back in "Angels & Demons" next year, that's according to CinemaBlend.com.

The site has revealed that Tom Hanks "has been officially locked up" to once again play the character in that "Da Vinci Code" follow-up, first announced almost a year ago. A source to the site even claimed that Sony Pictures would give Hanks the "biggest salary ever paid to an actor in the history of Hollywood" for the project.

Furthermore, the site has also brought in interesting tidbit indicating that supermodel Gisele Bundchen is up for the female lead role of Vittoria Vetra while saying that "Da Vinci" helmer Ron Howard is supposed to return to the director's seat. Meanwhile, production on the flick is expected to start July this year to meet its planned release on December 19, 2008.

Already had scribe Akiva Goldsman onboard to pen the script, the flick will be made based on Dan Brown's novel of the same name, which actually takes place a year before events happened in "Da Vinci Code." Here Langdon, a professor of religious iconology and Symbology at Harvard University, is assigned to analyze a mysterious symbol carved on the dead body of a scientist named Leonardo Vetra that then leads him a discovery of a plot to destroy the Vatican during a papal conclave.