A Dark Fantasy Horror Reimagining of Dante's Inferno is shooting in Rome, Italy this Fall. The Divine Comedy is set to begin filming in September, described as “a haunting new fantasy-horror feature inspired by the Inferno segment of Dante Alighieri's immortal masterpiece”.
You've likely come across the famous line from Dante Alighieri's Inferno, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Stephen King also borrowed it for The Stand.
If you're unfamiliar with Alighieri's original work, the story follows “Dante” as he journeys through the nine circles of hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. The upcoming reimagining from Irish production company Skincrawl Ltd. will be set in a nightmarish underworld hidden beneath reality itself, and will follow Dante, a grieving writer, as he descends into a terrifying realm of the dead in search of the woman he loves. From the press release:
Following the death of his beloved Beatrice, Dante is drawn into a hidden realm beneath the world of the living. Guided by a mysterious man known as Virgil, he descends through a series of terrifying circles inhabited by the dead and the damned. As he searches for Beatrice, Dante encounters lost souls trapped within eternal punishments shaped by their deepest fears, desires, and regrets.
Each step downward reveals a darker and more unsettling reality, where hope itself becomes a dangerous temptation. Pursued by monstrous entities and confronted by manifestations of human suffering, Dante struggles to distinguish truth from illusion.
As the journey deepens, he discovers that Hell is not merely a place, but a reflection of the human soul. To reach Beatrice, he must confront forces older than faith itself. What awaits at the bottom of the abyss may offer salvation—or eternal ruin.
The film, set to shoot in Italy this September, is the first project under a multi-picture deal with a major Italian studio. “As Guillermo Del Toro once said: Dante’s Inferno is the ultimate exercise in world-building,” the Skincrawl Studios team shared. “Every monster and every circle reflects a piece of the human soul. For anyone trying to build a mythic world on screen, Dante is the master class.”
As for what we can expect from this reimagining, Skincrawl promises boundaries will be pushed. “Our writers, who've worked on films like Damaged, with Samuel Jackson, or Darren Bousman's 11 11 11, have written a screenplay that not only pays homage to the mysteries of Dante's Inferno, but actually manages to push the limits of pain and physical torture to levels only seen in Barker's Hellraiser or Xavier Gens' Frontiers.”
*This article is sponsored by Skincrawl Studios.
