Hannibal ended in 2015 after three seasons on NBC, and the show has gained a cult following since its release. The show, from showrunner Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, American Gods) starred Mads Mikkelsen as the cannibal Hannibal Lecter and Hugh Dancy as criminal investigator Will Graham–all of whom want it to come back.
Now, talking to Collider, Bryan Fuller and Hugh Dancy have talked about the possibility of the show’s return, why the rights to the character make it difficult, and what would need to happen to create more Hannibal.
“Martha De Laurentiis controls the rights for the Hannibal character,” Fuller says. Gaunmont International Television also needs to be involved, because they own “the rights to those characters and those situations.” However, it sounds like De Laurentiis is on board, and has been helping Fuller. “Martha and I, every couple of years, pick up our bags and go door to door and see if anybody’s interested in revisiting,” he says.
However, it remains complicated, as the show would need somewhere to live. “I wish there was something that was definitive,” Fuller says. “There’s some ideas that I’m very excited about that continue the strange trajectory of season 3. But I have not been approached.”
Hannibal recently came to Netflix in the US, and Fuller believes this would be a good place for a new series. “The biggest hurdle is that we were somebody else’s show,” he says. “What I love about Netflix platforming the show now is there’s an opportunity for it to be seen as a Netflix show and maybe that will reconfigure their appetite, so to speak.”
Fuller and Dancy also expressed a desire to work together again. “I would defer to Bryan’s sense of what would work if the story that he wanted to tell and where he ended up taking it could work in that format,” Dancy said. “Obviously, this is a wildly hypothetical question. But in the hypothetical, absolutely. I’m in, basically.”
Hannibal’s ending was (no spoilers) somehow simultaneously definitive and ambiguous, depending on which angle you looked at it from. The show never rated very well, but was a huge critical success.
One thing’s for sure, though–if Hannibal came back, it would not be an adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, as that story’s main character, Clarice Starling, is getting her own series.
If you miss the show as much as we do, check out this gallery of horrifying murder sculptures from all three seasons.
