December 20, 2016

Earlier this week, a new episode of the Shock Waves podcast dropped with very special guest Bryan Fuller. HANNIBAL may have only lasted 3 seasons, but the creator and showrunner definitely felt there was much more story to tell with these characters.

Co-host Elric Kane had asked if he knew that Season 3’s final episode would be the series finale. “No,” Fuller responded. (Warning: Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen the finale) “There weren’t going to be any bodies found floating in that lagoon,” he explained. “And the whole point of showing Gillian Anderson sitting at a table with two additional place settings and her leg on the table was there was a big splash and dinner guests are coming.”

The fun aspect of the series from a fan perspective is that they were able to adapt and borrow various elements from all the novels and tell a new story in a different chronological order than in the books. That is, except for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, whose rights, sadly, are still tied up with the rights owners that produced the 1991 feature film.

“We would have loved to have had SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and still hope that something can be worked out that we get to continue telling Hannibal Lecter’s story and see SILENCE OF THE LAMBS in a way that the book hasn’t been represented. I think the film adaptation is a perfect film, but there’s a lot of interesting nooks and crannies to explore in a television series. I hope we get to tell the story.”

The series ended last year. And now, most of the cast and crew have moved on to other projects. Fuller is currently the creator and showrunner on AMERICAN GODS, the new Starz series based on the Neil Gaiman book, coming in 2017. And you may have seen Hannibal himself, Mads Mikkelsen as the villain of DOCTOR STRANGE or in that little movie from this past weekend ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY.

So when and how could they continue HANNIBAL for a 4th season? “The last airing was August 2015. And I think in August 2017, the rights (to SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) revert back and Martha De Laurentiis and I have talked about how to bring it back. I think, ideally for the cast, it would be as a mini-series, here and there. Let’s do 6 to 8 episodes of that, and 6 to 8 episodes over here. And do it as an irregular thing.”

Fannibals, keep the faith. August of 2017 is not that far off, and the mini-series format has worked for X-FILES and Gillian Anderson’s other series THE FALL. Why not do the occasional HANNIBAL season as a mini-series when schedules line up?

Be sure to listen to the entire episode for a great, fun lengthy chat with Bryan Fuller, embedded below for your convenience!