The other night, Hannibal came to an end. It was an interesting end, but not the one that fans were expecting. That wouldn’t have been an ending at all, but another season and the beginning of the Silence of the Lambs story.
Bryan Fuller, the show’s creator has now opened up on what his plans would have been, had the show continued past this season’s end. The reality is that the whole fourth season is already plotted out and Fuller has hopes that we may see it yet… in some form at least.
“Martha De Laurentiis is looking into financing for a feature film. The season 4 that we were going to tell is such a restart and reimagining that I still hope in some way that we get to tell a version of that, if not Silence of the Lambs itself, as a miniseries. I would love to return this cast to the big screen from whence they came, and Hannibal Lecter to the big screen, from whence he came. It seems perfectly symmetrical.”
As to what another season would mean for the dynamic between Will and Lecter:
“The story of the fourth season, which is a rebranding of the Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter relationship, that was very exciting. I looked at it and said, ‘This was actually the most interesting aspect of this story.’ So I regret we weren’t able to tell that. But who knows what the future may bring?”
Despite the fact that they were never able to get the rights to Silence of The Lambs, Fuller still had plans for the story.
“I am imagining a parallel structure of Hannibal in the institution, with a severely scarred Chilton, now having returned to his post, and juxtaposing that, back in the heyday of Hannibal as a psychiatrist, perhaps even earlier than we met him the first time, when he had Benjamin Raspail as a patient, and weave that story in and around the modern day Silence of the Lambs tale as we know it.”
In regards to casting, he wanted to bring in Lee Pace as Buffalo Bill, and also Ellen Page:
“Well, there’s a couple of ways to go. There’s the Ellen Page way, which I think would be fantastic and more kind of in line with the Clarice that we all know. But I know I would also like to explore who Clarice would be from a different racial background. There’s something about being poor and white in the South but there’s something else about being poor and black in the South, and I think it could be the necessary gateway into the character, to make Clarice as much our own signature character as we tried to make Will Graham.”