Omar Sy and Irrfan Khan have joined Imagine Entertainment and Columbia Pictures’ third Robert Langdon thriller starring Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones.

Production on Inferno is set to begin at the end of April ahead of an October 14 2016 release.

Ron Howard directs from David Koepp’s adaptation of the Dan Brown follow-up to The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons.

Howard’s Imagine partner Brian Grazer produces and Brown is executive producer with Anna Culp, Bill Connor and David Householter.

Hanks reprises his lead role in the $1.2bn global franchise as the Harvard symbologist who this time awakens in an Italian hospital with amnesia and must team up with a doctor to thwart a madman’s dastardly plot to unleash a plague.

The previously announced Jones, a lead actress Oscar nominee this year for The Theory Of Everything, will play Dr Sienna Brooks, while Khan assumes the role of Harry Sims aka The Provost. Sy (pictured), from French global smash The Intouchables, will play Christoph Bruder. 

Sidse Babett Knudsen, star of the Danish television series Borgen, will play the head of the World Health Organization. 

Michael De Luca and Andrea Giannetti will oversee the project for Columbia Pictures.