However, at that point, the studio wanted a film with a budget of $15 million and rejected Dante's version.
Reading Dante in translation, and James's version in particular, can be as demanding as the climb up Mount Purgatory.
The scene feels close to Dante's inspired version of hell (the men's eyes glow red in the dark), shadowed further by the sins of colonialism.
Alongside the remixes, you'll find a few remakes like Cheat Codes and Dante Klein's updated version of Kevin Lyttle's 2004 hit "Turn Me On" and a collaborative, indie version of Philip Bailey and Phil Collins' "Easy Lover".
The video-game version of Dante's "Inferno" comes out next week.
The speaker is a contemporary version of Dante's tragic heroine Francesca, condemned to suffer in Hell with her lover, Paolo.
Inside the building that tranquillity gives way to a comic-book version of Dante's "Divine Comedy," with strict divisions between various worlds.
Inside, they are dark and dank and sweaty, packed with masses of hot, sagging flesh, a spa version of Dante's City of Dis, where the heretics are punished in burning stone coffins.
Allen Mandelbaum, whose fluid, sensitive English version of Dante's "Divine Comedy" stamped his reputation as one of the world's premier translators of Italian and classical poetry, died on Oct. 27 in Winston-Salem, N.C.
But during the first precious half-hour, I like to be alone with my neighbors — Eugène Delacroix's drowning men in a storm-tossed boat or the artist's version of Dante and Virgil in hell.
