Inc., the film's distributor for Japan, is putting the film on 863 screens nationwide and hopes to make 10 billion yen at the box office, which translates into 8 million viewers.

"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," released in December 2002 in Japan, is currently the highest-grossing foreign film here, with 20.3 billion yen in box office sales.

Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co. has sold 2.3 million hard cover copies of "The Da Vinci Code" part one and part two in translation since it was released in 2004.

About 6.5 million paperback copies of volumes one through three were sold between March and Thursday.