Variety: EA making Dante's 'Inferno' game, studios bidding for movie rights

by Alexander Sliwinski on Oct 31st 2008 10:30AM

Variety reports that four movie studios are currently bidding for the film rights to Electronic Arts' as-yet unnannounced game based on Dante's Inferno. EA's recently been on a movie deal bender, selling the rights to films based on Army of Two (suckers) and Mass Effect, but this is the first real "cart before horse" deal we've heard about.

We've certainly seen some high-profile game-to-movie deals in recent memory, with Gore Verbinski helming BioShock and Brett Ratner taking on God of War. Maybe it doesn't matter that movie executives are bidding on the rights to a game that nobody has seen, but for our money we'd like to know if there's an audience for it first.

Source

Tags: dante, dantes-inferno, ea, electronic-arts, variety

Reader Comments (50)

I think there is an audience. It's a pretty interesting story. There have been several attempts at good movie versions before, though, and most of them don't end up in production. A better question is how is it going to translate to a game? Sort of action/adventure through the different circles of Hell? Do we really want/need a game with such a strong moral compass?

Why not? At the very least a game with a strong moral compass would be a refreshing change of pace.

I'm sure they'll ruin it and make it a God of War style beat-em-up or something.

I did the loading screen of the Commodore 64 game DANTE'S INFERNO published by Beyond in 1986.

Here it is:

http://www.lemon64.com/games/popup_screen.php?name=dantes_inferno_01.gif

Hehe, olden days.

You perv. :)

@PSoG Are those pixel people doing what I think those pixel people are doing?

Oh, there's no way they won't ruin it. Video games aren't really sophisticated enough yet, at least not on a AAA level, to do justice to something like Dante's Inferno. A generic GOW clone sounds about right to me.

At any rate, I at least hope that they have the demon who had made his ass into a trumpet as a boss (from Canto XXI). Musical farting demons? Hell yeah!

I heard they're going to make it a TMNT / Castle Crashers type beat 'em up. You play as either Dante, Virgil, Charon, or Beatrice and battle your way through the circles with magic and combo breakers as you level up and earn new upgrades and armor skins. Dante starts with the helm of piety, but by the end you can supposedly upgrade to the helm of righteousness, +5 damage multiplier against undead or something.

Expect the sequel, Purgatorio, to be a minigame collection inlcuding games like lying on the ground face down or running around in a circle.

Honestly I'm surprised to see that a movie hasn't been made on the infero long before, I really like the idea behind it though, as long as it isn't confined by the rules of the video game the plot is set in. Really the idea of "inferno" stands on itself, so hopefully they are two quite independent projects that just happen to share a few themes.

i hope billy joel's we didn't start the fire makes the film.

there's also a paradise lost movie in the works which sounds promising. i love stuff like this.

Wonder if this will be episodic? Each level of hell gets its own episode.

Next week on the Sixth Level of Hell: Tomb of the Flaming Heretic...

Forget "Inferno", somebody needs to make a "Paradise Lost" game where you play as Satan. That would be bad ass.

That's what i was thinking

I would love to see the right-wing nut jobs come out of the woodwork to protest that game. Free publicity in my opinion.

Wish some developer/publisher had the balls to do it, because there is lot to work with there, imagine the imagery.

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Compass-Playstation-2/dp/B000R32IDW/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1225469358&sr=8-13

Of course, the temptress turns out not to be any characters in the first installment, but the scientist girl who shows up in the second book, which doesn't appear to be getting its own movie.

Yeah, the Golden Compass sucked anyway. Oh, look at me, I'm the Anti-C.S. Lewis, I write like crap but controversy sells, cha-ching!

There was already a dante's inferno game in the making back in 2003 or so. The first level of hell had players sneaking into a concentration camp filled with 3 headed dogs (cyrebrus sp). There was some really sweet looking enemies too, but the game got pulled because of offensive nature.

So, what, you just follow Virgil until you beat hell?

All of the shades will try talking you to sleep, followed by a brief political history lesson and a quiz.

Kamizar -- the final boss is nothing less than Satan's junk.

FEAR ME!!! I AM KNOWN AS BAAL-SACK!!!

I remember when I first read this book. Confused the hell out of me, but after reading it two more times I really enjoyed. If the game is good it will be the first game based off a book/movie I buy.

For the record this game/movie idea was mine and they took it from my brain... like the government takes all my good ideas while I sleep. I actually would have done it some justice where as I am highly skeptical anyone in the world of pop culture today could handle what is probably the greatest poem/book of all time.

The book is so boring. I had to read it twice for two different programs. I don't see how it could be a game unless they take DRAMATIC license with it, since the original is basically just a walking tour of Hell, followed by "climb up Satan's body".

Satan of the Colossus?

I love the idea, taking something that shouldn't apply to the game world and making it work... but the likelihood that they'd ruin the book with something like God of War is just so high. Not that God of War is bad, great game, solid story for a videogame, great delivery, but you can't do that with the Inferno. Considering that the most advertised "moral" game was Bioshock, who's moral choices were a joke, then this could be something delightfully novel. It's just unlikely they'll pull it off.

A+ for new ideas though.

they made a Dante's inferno game, its called "Devil May Cry"

Hot.

Beatrice better get double D.

Star Wars games? LotR games? Not to mention a lot of classic NES and SNES era games that were based off of lesser known literary and cinematic IPs.

...is what I meant to post in reply to 3cubed's post, above, which states:

"I remember when I first read this book. Confused the hell out of me, but after reading it two more times I really enjoyed. If the game is good it will be the first game based off a book/movie I buy."

This seems like the kind of fame that would have popped up during the heyday of adventure games. I could care less about the movie, can we get more info on the game?

Grrr, proofreading, fame = game.

Devil May Cry anybody? The first game that is. Dante, follows the Dark Knight (which ends up being Vergil) basically into Hell to finally fight Mundus (Prince of Hell) CMON MAN!

I'm excited, but then again, I still have my doubts against EA despite their new IPs.

As long as I can kick / trip over the heads of those frozen up to their heads in ice, I'm happy.

Why not just make a trilogy of movies based on the Divine Comedy?

Looks like an English major got into the video game writing industry

TMNT Tournament Fighters Sega:Sisyphus's Theme

Whoa...Pasted the wrong thing! Here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqQC4qjXqyY

So will it the game's dialogue be written in terza rima? That would be awesome to say the least.

@Courtney: Those pixel people are Cherubim iirc, flying out of skull's mouth. I used to love my Koala Pad.

Awesome picture. Gustave Dore is a badass.

Devil May Cry anyone? It's not directly based on the Divine Comedy, but damn, I think a game completely based on the Divine Comedy would be a bit boring. You'd just be walking along looking at scenery and contemplating.

Also, Diablo? And I think Shin Megami Tensei has referenced the Divine Comedy before.

Basically, this is unnecessary.

Hell yeah! (pun intended)

One of my favorite books ever. Not sure how it will adapt to a video game, though. Just please, please, please don't turn it into a "collect x number of items" quest.

Wait... The Game of the Movie of the Book is one of the worst possible scenarios you can have, and the Movie of the Game of the Book would be even WORSE. Who the HELL thought this was a good idea!? (He he... Unintentional pun...)

On a side-note, a Dante's Inferno game? FUCK YEAH SEAKING. That sounds far more like it, screw the movie...

The game (and movie) must have some potential, if there are already biddings even before we know what the game's about. Then again, it's the media world.
Besides that, will be waiting eagerly for the game!!! Then we'll see about the movie. I just cannot picture it in a moview format just yet.

It's not a very marketable idea, to say the least. Inferno is just the first part of the Divine Comedy, and unless EA and movie studios are going to pull that trilogy nonsense and "produce" Purgatorio and Paradiso alongside Inferno, which I seriously doubt (given the stark pro-Catholic iconography--particularly in Paradiso--and the fact that the Divine Comedy's 100 cantos don't follow any sort of plot structure that lends itself to adaptation), how are they going to end Inferno? Dante and Virgil kill Lucifer at the frozen center of the world, climb out the other side and before you lies...Florence, ready to welcome back its exile? It's a terrible idea for a game, and obviously hatched by people with, in this instance, little sense of what really made the Inferno significant (its political symbolism, Dante's expounding of his odd and self-centered theology, and his obsession with/deification of the feminine in Beatrice), unable to extract and build upon its thematic elements for an original IP. The film idea is dubious, too, since the last time anyone tried to turn poetry into movies we had to sit through Troy and weren't given advance pardons for grievous bodily harm inflicted on Wolfgang Peterson.

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Variety: EA making Dante's 'Inferno' game, studios bidding for movie rights

Reader Comments (50)

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