Martin Scorsese is set to executive produce the next movie from director Julian Schnabel, “In The Hand of Dante,” based on Nick Tosches‘ novel. It’s a feature that focuses on New York mobsters getting their hands on a manuscript of Dante’s “The Divine Comedy,” which would be considered one of the most rare and valuable pieces of art in existence. It’s also landed quite the leading cast as Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, and Gerard Butler have nabbed roles in the mobster pic. Deadline reports that production is underway in Italy after landing an Interim Agreement from SAG-AFTRA permitting them to shoot during the strike. A renowned painter and visual artist before turning filmmaker, Schnabel has been directing features since the mid-1990s. He only has six movies under his belt, so he’s extremely picky, which hopefully means there is something extremely attractive to the filmmaker to jump into this next.
Here is the synopsis of the original novel via Amazon:
Deep inside the Vatican library, a priest discovers the rarest and most valuable art object ever found: the manuscript of “The Divine Comedy,” written in Dante’s own hand. Via Sicily, the manuscript makes its way from the priest to a mob boss in New York City, where a writer named Nick Tosches is called to authenticate the prize. For this writer, the temptation is too great: he steals the manuscript in a last-chance bid to have it all. Some will find it offensive; others will declare it transcendent; it is certain to be the most ragingly debated novel of the decade.
The last film Schnabel made, “At Eternity’s Gate,” was also in the world of art; a biopic drama about the life of painter Vincent van Gogh that landed Willem Dafoe a Best Actor Oscar nomination (it also co-starred Isaac). You might also be aware of his fantastic love letter to the New York art scene with 1996’s “Basquiat,” a definitive film that explored various artists of the era, including the relationship between David Bowie’s Andy Warhol and Jeffrey Wright’s Jean-Michel Basquiat, who tragedically died young.
The older a book is, the more its value increases, and when it’s a one-of-a-kind manuscript, it could make it nearly priceless, depending on the subject/author. Books being smaller makes them perfect targets for thieves, given how small they are compared to paintings. Black-market dealers and appraisers do exist and are usually where stolen masterpieces and rare books are fenced after they’ve been stolen (Usually by professional thieves and criminal syndicates). Either way, it’s all very steeped in real-world crime that doesn’t often get covered in the world of cinema.
Scorsese had a relationship with Tosches going back several years when he almost directed a film based on the author’s biography about Dean Martin titled “Dino.”
