Universal wins bidding war for EA's 'Dante's Inferno' movie rights

by Alexander Sliwinski on Nov 3rd 2008 11:30AM

The cart has beaten the horse to the finish line as Universal Pictures garnered the film rights to Electronic Art's as-yet unannounced game, allegedly titled Dante's Inferno. The studio beat out Paramount, New Regency, MGM and Warner Bros. in the multi-million dollar deal. According to Variety, the plan is to release the movie closer to the "beginning of the game's life cycle" -- no word on when that will be.

EA has yet to confirm the game's title, which is simply speculated to be Dante's Inferno and involves a "journey through the depths of hell." We're still wrapping our brains over a movie being tied to a game's release so soon ... times are a changin'.

Source

Tags: dantes-inferno, Dantes-Inferno-movie, ea, electronic-arts, inferno, movies, universal

Reader Comments (18)

couldn't they just have made a movie about the book?

Basing a film on a classic piece of literature such as this runs the risk of critical expectations being too high.

By going off of the game vs. the book, they'll be able to fly in under lower expectations, as well as potentially gain some additional viewers due to recognition of the game.

I'm more disturbed seeing a movie company picking up the rights to a game that was only recently annouced.

What if the game sucks?

Agreed. Maybe the stories are coming out wrong and it's really just a matter of the game and movie being released simultaneously to attempt to milk as much money from a sub-par game and sub-par movie before they get wind of each others' shortcomings.

I want to know what will happen to the film when the game gets killed by EA a few years into development.

Let me guess, the two sequels will be Dante's Purgatorio and Dante's Paradiso.

Then they'll release a collector's edition of all three games and call it "Dante's Divine Comedy."

They did make a silent film a gazillion years ago based on the poem (and it's actually pretty cool, too).

I kinda feel like a game could either be REALLY good or REALLY terrible, depending on how literally they're taking the title...

As long as it's not a game based on "Dante's Peak" I think we should count ourselves lucky.

WHY YOU HATIN' ON DANTE'S PEAK??

The grandma falling in the acid=EPIC.

I hated that movie because of that. The main point of the movie is they have to go up the mountain to save the stubborn grandmother, and then they kill her off anyway.

It's MacGuffin's like that which drive me nuts.

lol@mcguffin

BUT, it would probably sell more.

Its one of my favorite books, yet I have trouble seeing it as a game. I guess it would have to take the structure and visuals given by Dante and then substitute in a complete action storyline that would have litle to do with the book itself.

I'm hoping it's not just an action game with a story based on Inferno stapled to it. An interesting puzzle/adventure game would be more suitable to the story, though I doubt a movie studio would be interested in it if that's what it was.