In this episode of Film Stories with Simon Brew, a pair of hit movies, with a religious edge to each.

Filmmaker M Night Shyamalan admitted he came to Signs off the back of the mixed response to his previous film, Unbreakable. He came up with a project initially for an older actor, that blended two key ideas - and the bidding war in Hollywood for the film was a swift one.

There was a bidding war too for the screen rights to Dan Brown's extraordinarily successful book, The Da Vinci Code. At first, there was a chance it could go to TV, but $6m of Sony's money did the job - and a whole lot of controversy was just around the corner...

Find Simon on Twitter at @simonbrew, and the podcast can be found at @filmstories

Support this podcast: www.patreon.com/simonbrew.

Find our print magazines at store.filmstories.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices