For a Uruguayan filmmaker who only recently made a big impact in the U.S. with a viral short film, Panic Attack, Fede Alvarez is quickly becoming one of the go-to names in genre.
Fresh off the success of his Evil Dead remake (which earned the blessing of reboot producers Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert), Alvarez appears to be moving from a hellacious cabin in the woods and straight into Hell.
According to Deadline, Alvarez is in talks with Universal Pictures to adapt Dante’s Inferno for the big screen. To be clear, this would not be an adaptation of Dante’s actual epic poem, one-third of The Divine Comedy, but rather the 2010 Electronic Arts video game named after it.
The game is set during the Third Crusade (the first Assassin’s Creed was more recent then), when Dante Alighiero, now a Templar, partakes in the slaughter of Saracen prisoners before learning that as punishment for his many transgressions, his Florentine lover Beatrice has been dragged to Hell. Desperate to win her back, Dante descends into the Nine levels with only Virgil as his guide to free her hand.
Renaissance poetry, it likely will not be. And considering how much demon imagery Alvarez already injected into the Deadites, this will likely be one hellfire intense film. Yet for fans of the game, this may be a saving grace?