Ron Howard Will Not Direct Third Dan Brown Film

Ron Howard will not be finishing what he started with the Dan Brown films.

CNN has confirmed that Howard will not be directing the final installment of the trilogy based on Brown’s wildly popular books.

Despite occupying the director’s chair for “The Da Vinci Code” in 2006 and “Angels & Demons” in 2009, a rep for Sony Pictures told CNN that Howard has opted to produce the forthcoming film “The Lost Symbol,” but not direct.

Reports said that like the first two films, the third movie will star Tom Hanks as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon. Both the films and the books have been embraced by fans.

The confirmation that Howard has stepped away from directing the final installment comes on the heels of news that Universal scrapped the Oscar winner’s highly-anticipated TV series and three-movie adaptation of the Stephen King fantasy Western, “The Dark tower.”