Books

See You In Hell: Dante's 'Inferno' Movie Is Coming

by Caitlin White

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, because it's finally happening: A Dante's Inferno movie adaptation is coming. Warner Bros. scored a deal with screenwriter Dwain Worrell for his script for Inferno, one piece of Dante Alighieri's epic, three-part 14th century poem Divine Comedy. Just think of the built-in franchise potential with Purgatorio and Paradiso already on the table.

This isn't the first time Dante's Inferno has been made into a movie. In 2010, the animated movie Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic was released, of course there's the Spencer Tracy-starring 1935 adaptation, the silent film version in 1924, and other movies dating back to 1911. But with Warner Bros. thinking franchise, this upcoming movie from Worrell is shaping up to be certainly the largest scale.

In case you were snoozing that week in your high school class, Dante's Inferno is a long allegory that follows Dante himself as he journeys through the nine circles of hell — Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery — guided by the Roman poet Virgil toward salvation. The Inferno movie adaptation, however, will put some of the religious themes in the backseat and frame the story around "the epic love story at the core" according to Deadline.

As the poem goes, Beatrice is Dante's one true love who (to make an epic, seriously long story short) makes a deal with the devil while Dante is fighting in the Crusades. She ends up being killed, and when she is sent to hell, she asks Virgil to help Dante find her. And Dante, being the hero, ventures into hell to save his love.

Basically, Ryan Gosling is primed for this part.

However, in the Divine Comedies, it's Beatrice who does the saving, eventually taking over for Virgil and guiding Dante along his path. Here's hoping that stays the same in the movie.

No director has signed on just yet (probably because they're waiting for The Lord of the Rings' Peter Jackson, right?), and the film is still in its very early stages. But just wait for the Christmas day (obviously) in a few years to be spent in hell, literally.