In the Hand of Dante has Pacino, Gadot and Scorsese — and still missed Netflix's Top 10
Julian Schnabel's In the Hand of Dante stars Oscar Isaac, Al Pacino, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler and Martin Scorsese — and flopped, missing Netflix's weekly Top 10 with a 29% critics' score.
On paper it looked flop-proof: Oscar Isaac in a dual role, Al Pacino, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler, John Malkovich — and Martin Scorsese, acting. In practice, In the Hand of Dante has become one of the year’s most talked-about streaming failures: it landed on Netflix on 24 June and never even cracked the platform’s weekly Top 10.
Why did In the Hand of Dante flop?
Missing the Top 10 means the film opened with fewer than 2.7 million views — a pittance for a production with this cast. And audiences weren’t the only ones walking away: critics savaged it, down to a meagre 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. Written and directed by Julian Schnabel from Nick Tosches’ novel, the film jumps between 14th-century Florence and New York’s criminal underworld, chasing the supposed original manuscript of the Divine Comedy. Ambitious? Very. Convincing? Apparently not even for the platform’s most curious subscribers.
Is a dream cast enough to save a film?
This summer keeps answering no — and posing the opposite question. While Schnabel’s all-star sank quietly into the catalogue, Nolan’s The Odyssey reached cinemas with sold-out IMAX sessions and the opposite argument: a director with a clear vision and an event built for the big screen. The lesson for studios and streamers writes itself: names sell a poster, but they can’t hold up a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be.
If there’s a consolation, it’s this: watching Scorsese act opposite Pacino remains a curiosity that doesn’t come around every year. It just might not be worth the two and a half hours.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
