Hollywood star Tom Hanks will reprise his Da Vinci Code role as Professor Robert Langdon for the third time on the big screen next year.

Sony Pictures and Imagine Entertainment have fixed April 2015 as the date to begin shooting the adaptation of Dan Brown's Inferno in Italy, reported Deadline.

Ron Howard is set to direct once again alongside Brian Grazer as producer and David Koepp overseeing the script.

Hanks was last seen as the Harvard symbologist in 2009's Angels & Demons, which grossed $486 million worldwide.

The Lost Symbol is the third novel in Brown's bestselling mystery-thriller series but it is being skipped for the most recent release Inferno.

Langdon's latest adventure sees him battle to recover his memories after awakening in hospital with amnesia. A doctor, Sienna Brooks, helps him piece together a mystery connected to Dante's poem Inferno and a global plague.