EXCLUSIVE: In a preemptive deal, Warner Bros has purchased the original feature pitch Dante’s Inferno from screenwriter Dwain Worrell. Gianni Nunnari’s Hollywood Gang and Akiva Goldsman’s Weed Road will produce it together. The project has the studio excited by its scale and franchise potential. It’s based on the epic love story that is at the core of Dante’s Inferno. Dante descends through the nine circles of hell to save the woman he loves.
Nik Manikurve and Chantal Nong brought it in for Warner Bros and they will shepherd it with Hollywood Gang’s Shannon Gaulding and Weed Road’s Greg Lessans. You might remember Worrell. He was the writer who, while living in China, got Amazon Studios to bite on The Wall, his first big script written while he was living in China. It’s a $5 million-budget thriller about a deadly cat-and-mouse contest waged by an American sharpshooter and the Iraqi sniper who has him pinned behind a small chunk of concrete. He was working in China as a translator when he wrote it; his Internet opportunities and ability to get the script seen were limited, but he got it to the Amazon guys, they bought it, and he soon had agency reps and that script climbed to the top of the 2014 Black List. Warner Bros then acquired Mind Corp from director Jose Padilha, which Worrell is also scripting. That project also has Gianni Nunnari’s Hollywood Gang producing.
Worrell is repped by CAA, Madhouse Entertainment and attorney Stephen Clark.
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