Netflix Picks Up In the Hand of Dante

Netflix has acquired In the Hand of Dante, Julian Schnabel’s sprawling mystery-thriller epic starring Oscar Isaac as writer Nick Tosches, a fictionalized version of the author of the 2002 novel on which the film is based. In the story, Tosches is hired by a crime boss played by John Malkovich to authenticate an original, handwritten copy of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, and he teams up with a lower-level gangster, Louie, played by Gerard Butler.

The film layers its present-day crime plot with flashbacks to Dante’s time, with Isaac and Butler also appearing as Dante and Pope Boniface VIII. The cast includes Al Pacino as Tosches’s mobster uncle, Martin Scorsese as Dante’s mentor Isaiah, Jason Momoa as a gangster who clashes with Nick, and Gal Gadot in dual roles as Dante’s wife Gemma and Nick’s partner Guilietta.

The movie premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in September of 2025. Critical response was mixed: the film carries a 43% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has been described as ambitious but uneven.

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