The critics laughed and bad-mouthed the movie, but "The Da Vinci Code" showed over the weekend what a strong brand it is. It had the second best box-office ever for the first weekend in North America, pulling in $77 million, and worldwide it raked in $224 million, reports the Los Angeles Times.

"With a start like this, you just sit back and enjoy the ride," Sony's chairman of worldwide marketing and distribution, Jeff Blake, tells the paper.

And plenty of other people are cashing in on the bonanza, reports the New York Times. I saw some of it at Costco this weekend. There are games, diets, calendars, explanations, primers and rebuttals as well as lots of hangers-on, that have nothing to do with the Da Vince Code but simply allude to it - like John Allen's new book on Opus Dei. He argues that the conspiratorial and sinister side of the group has been way overplayed but the book's getting great playt because it's about the secretive group that tries to, well … keep the secret, in the book and the movie.

And if you need an explanation for this marketing phenomoneon, listen to the words of one author who has written a guide to the more esoteric stuff in the novel: "We're talking about something that over time will be a multibillion-dollar brand business," Dan Burstein, author of "Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind the Da Vinci Code" (Client Distribution Services, 2004), tells the paper. "This movie is going to be seen all over the world; it's going to be debated and discussed all over the world; it's going to have large DVD sales. It has a very long tail on it."

I was one of those few who didn't finish the book because I got tired of the breathless endings to every three-page chapter, but the controversy has certainly made the movie a hit and generated billions in additional sales. It's truly a phenomenon.