Bryan Fuller Teases Hannibal Season 4: Will Graham Steps Into The Silence of the Lambs

Every few months someone asks Bryan Fuller or Mads Mikkelsen if Hannibal is coming back, and somehow there is always just enough smoke to keep the fire alive. Here is the latest: Fuller is actively trying to lock down the rights to The Silence of the Lambs so he can make the Hannibal season 4 he has been talking about for years, and yes, his plan involves bringing Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham into the story even though Will is not in that novel.

Where things actually stand

Fuller told The Playlist’s Discourse podcast that he is working to secure the Silence rights. The reason the NBC series never tackled that book back in the day is a rights tangle that goes like this: MGM owns The Silence of the Lambs, while Hannibal the show was made by a different collection of companies — Dino De Laurentiis Company, Living Dead Guy Productions, AXN Original Productions, Gaumont International Television, and Chiswick Productions. Early on, MGM was reportedly trying to do a deal with producer Martha De Laurentiis that would have kept everything together. Then Gaumont stepped in with a better offer, MGM could not match it, and feelings were hurt. That bad blood made the Clarice Starling rights a headache for the series. Fuller says the issue is not solved yet, but, in his words:

'It’s getting ironed out.'

What season 4 would look like

Fuller’s pitch is to adapt The Silence of the Lambs as a fourth season and fold Will Graham into it — even though Will only appears in Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon in the books. He explained (via Coming Soon’s transcription) that he does not want to separate his two linchpin characters or the actors who play them. He even met with both leads recently and came away newly energized:

'I can’t imagine lifting and separating those two characters and those two actors. I met with Hugh and Mads last night… and it was so wonderful to see these two guys together and their brotherhood and fraternity. I was like, we’ve got to get the band back together.'

The Zendaya of it all

Fuller has been open for a while about wanting Zendaya to play Clarice Starling if he gets to do Silence. That is his dream casting, not a done deal, but the vision is very much there.

A quick refresher on Hannibal

NBC canceled the series after three seasons, and, yes, it has been eight years since that happened. The show tracked the twisty, increasingly intimate relationship between FBI special investigator Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) — a brilliant forensic psychiatrist who becomes both Will’s greatest adversary and the only person who truly understands him. The show pulled together an unusually loaded roster in front of and behind the camera, which is part of why fans (and the people who made it) keep trying to revive it.

• Main cast: Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Caroline Dhavernas, Hettienne Park, Laurence Fishburne, Scott Thompson, Aaron Abrams, Gillian Anderson
• Executive producers: Bryan Fuller, Martha De Laurentiis, Sidonie Dumas, Christophe Riandee, Katie O'Connell, Elisa Roth, Sara Colleton, David Slade, Chris Brancato, Jesse Alexander, Michael Rymer, Steve Lightfoot
• Notable writers: Nick Antosca (Channel Zero), Don Mancini (Child's Play/Chucky)

The bottom line

Fuller is trying to clear the final rights hurdle with MGM so he can do his take on The Silence of the Lambs, bring back Mikkelsen and Dancy, and weave Will Graham into Clarice’s story. He says the paperwork is inching forward, he just sat down with his two leads, and he still has a very specific Clarice in mind. It is all very much in motion, not finalized — but the intent to get the band back together is about as clear as it gets.