Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Fede Alvarez, Dante’s Inferno Movie

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Fede AlvarezFede Alvarez, Uruguayan director of Evil Dead, will be directing a live-action movie adaptation of Electronic Arts’ 2010 video game, Dante’s Inferno, for Universal Pictures.

Alvarez himself confirmed the rumors in an interview with Collider.com, in which he says:

“It sounds like that might be the next film.  We’re super excited about everything on that movie.  It’s with Universal.  Jay Basu’s the writer, he did great work on the script, we worked together on the story.  We’ve got a great script already and we’re about to start casting the film.  So it’s pretty close, pretty exciting.  Basically we’re making a film based on the biggest mythology about hell ever; the biggest poem about hell.  So it’s really something that is super exciting, and it’s not the hell you’ve seen before.  It’s completely different form whatever you think.  It’s one of those films that if you expect to see lava and caves, you’re not going to get that, it’s a completely new realm and new universe.  Horror fans will dig it, because for me it was a good transition to go from Evil Dead to go and do something that is more a big adventure, but set in hell, so of course it’s pretty hardcore just because it’s hell itself.  So it’s pretty cool.  It’s a cool movie.” — Interview with Haleigh Foutch, “Fede Alvarez Talks From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, Working with Robert Rodriguez, Evil Dead 2, Machina, Dante’s Inferno, and More,” Collider (May 6, 2014)

See also: Dante Today’s post about the EA video game.

Contributed by Sarah Montross

McFarlane, McElroy, Dippe’, “Spawn” (1997)

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spawn“The movie adaptation of Todd McFarlane’s mega-cult comic! Al Simmons is a hitman who works for the government. One day, someone sets him up and he gets killed. Of course, he goes to Hell, where Malebolgia – the Devil himself – offers him a deal. Al will come back to life with a certain amount of “energy”, but when it runs out, he will return to Hell as a Hellspawn, and help in the war against Heaven. Al accepts the offer, because of the love for his wife Wanda, but when he arrives to Earth he sees that the Devil has cheated him… His face is horribly distorted, his body covered with a living suit, and the worst of all; he finds Wanda married with his best friend. Shattered, the Spawn starts wandering in New York’s alleys.” [. . .]    –Chris Makrozahopoulos, IMDb

Matthew Pearl, “The Dante Club” (2003)

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matthew-pearl-the-dante-club-2003“1865 Boston, a small group of literary geniuses puts the finishing touches on America’s first translation of The Divine Comedy and prepares to unveil the remarkable visions of Dante to the New World. The powerful old guard of Harvard College wants to keep Dante out–believing that the infiltration of such foreign superstitions onto our bookshelves would prove as corrupting as the foreign immigrants invading Boston harbor. The members of the Dante Club–poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell and publisher J. T. Fields –endure the intimidation of their fellow Boston Brahmins for a sacred literary cause, an endeavor that has sustained Longfellow in the hellish aftermath of his wife’s tragic death by fire.”    —Matthew Pearl

How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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