EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has snapped up In the Hand of Dante from Oscar nominated filmmaker Julian Schnabel.
The pic which features a big cast of headliners including Oscar Isaac, Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, John Malkovich, Louis Cancelmi, Sabrina Impacciatore, Franco Nero, Benjamin Clementine, Paolo Bonacelli, Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino and Jason Momoa made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival last year where Schnabel was awarded the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award for his contribution to the cinematic arts.
The movie, Schnabel’s latest film since 2018’s Oscar nominated portrait of Vincent Van Gogh, At Eternity’s Gate, is an adaptation of Nick Tosches’ 2002 novel of the same name, In the Hand of Dante. Primetime Emmy nominee Isaac plays dual roles that of New York author Tosches in the 21st century and Dante Alighieri in the 14th century. Nick is hired by a mafia don to confirm and then steal a priceless manuscript said to be Dante’s original Divine Comedy in his own hand, dragging Nick into an underworld he’s both repulsed by and complicit in. The film transgresses time to show how greed, faith, desire, and the hunger for meaning repeat themselves. Nick’s search for this masterwork reveals his true identity to himself as Nick and as Dante. Part muscular crime movie, part spiritual odyssey and part tragicomedy, the film turns a thriller about a stolen book into a meditation on immortality and the transcendental power of art and love.
Schnabel and Louise Kugelberg adapted Tosches’ novel. Producers on the pic are Jon Kilik, Francesco Melzi d’Eril, Olmo Schnabel, Gabriele Bebe Moratti, Vito Schnabel and Schnabel.
Schnabel was recently honored at the Texas Film Awards which lauds those filmmakers and talent who have ties to the Lone Star State. Schnabel, though a Brooklyn native, grew up in the surfing border town of Brownsville, TX, a place which inspired him as both a painter and a filmmaker.
WME Independent handled global sales on the project.