Last fall, Universal won a bidding war with Paramount, Warner Bros., New Regency, and MGM over the film rights to Dante’s Inferno, a video game based on Dante’s The Divine Comedy. This is hilarious, not only because the studios could just as easily have made a movie based on the original epic poem — which is in the public domain and therefore would’ve been way cheaper — but also because the video game had not yet been announced to the public (typically movie rights aren’t sold until after games become hits, or after they flop, in which case they’re sold to Uwe Boll). But Universal paid “an option fee against seven-figure purchase price” for the game, which we’re only now seeing today — and it looks terrifying! We know it’s supposed to be Hell, but do there really need to be barfing dragons? How come they never make movies out of nice video games, like Wii Tennis?
