20 Recent Movies That Were Sent Out To Die
3. In the Hand of Dante
Considering that In the Hand of Dante is a new drama from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), there was plenty of awards hype ahead of its premiere at last year's Venice Film Festival.
However, the wind was promptly sucked out of its sails when an HD screener leaked online almost a full month before said premiere, with word-of-mouth from those who watched it skewing harshly negative.
From there, Schnabel's film was largely panned at Venice, after which it spent the better part of a year without distribution - likely a dual result of the poor reviews and few companies wanting to buy a film that's already available online in high quality.
In the Hand of Dante was eventually acquired by Netflix and released online this past June to barely a peep - beyond receiving even more negative reviews, of course.
This was basically a worst-case scenario for a buzzy awards hopeful, to have its legs immediately cut off both critically and commercially.