Julian Schnabel’s ‘In the Hand of Dante’ Leaks Online Weeks Before Venice Premiere

Julian Schnabel is returning to the Venice Film Festival with “In the Hand of Dante”, which will screen out of competition in its full, uncut form. The 150-minute epic — starring Oscar Isaac — will have its world premiere on the Lido, and we’ve now got a first-look image of Martin Scorsese, who co-stars as Dante Alighieri’s mentor.

Under normal circumstances, that Scorsese still would have been the headline. But last night, Schnabel’s film leaked online. I’ve got a few theories about who pulled the trigger, but for now, I’ll keep them to myself and focus on the film’s backstory.

‘Dante,’ which Schnabel has been trying to make for more than a decade, was under pressure from financiers to trim its hefty runtime. It was originally eyeing to premiere last year, but a protracted fight over length and format delayed it. Schnabel had contractually agreed to deliver a two-hour, color feature. What he turned in instead was two and a half hours, partly in black-and-white. The ensuing back-and-forth took more than a year, but Schnabel ultimately prevailed. The version screening at Venice is the one he intended, uncut.

The leak couldn’t have come at a worse time. The film currently has no distributor, and this early piracy could push down acquisition bids. For any filmmaker, having your movie leak ahead of release is a nightmare; having it happen weeks before a major world premiere is virtually unheard of.

Shot in Rome, “In the Hand of Dante” adapts Nick Tosches’ time-jumping novel, interweaving two storylines: a 14th-century thread with Dante himself, and a modern-day tale of a roguish scholar who defies the mafia while getting caught up in a dangerous manuscript deal.

The cast is one of the most eclectic of the year: Oscar Isaac, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, John Malkovich, Gerard Butler, Al Pacino, and Martin Scorsese — whether in a cameo or something more substantial remains to be seen.

Schnabel, best known for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “Before Night Falls”, hasn’t directed a film since 2018’s “At Eternity’s Gate”, which also premiered at Venice and earned Willem Dafoe a Best Actor prize and an Oscar nomination.