Hannibal Season 4 Back On The Menu? Showrunner Says Everyone Wants In, Including Mads Mikkelsen And Hugh Dancy
Hannibal’s creator is sharpening knives for an audacious season 4 that aims to raise the stakes and reinvent the series—if it gets the green light.
Hannibal might actually crawl back out of the abyss. It has been a full decade since NBC cut it off mid-mood, and now showrunner Bryan Fuller says he has a plan for season 4 and the cast is ready to suit up again. There are some hurdles, but the vibe is promising.
Yes, the gang wants back in
On The Horror Queers Podcast, Fuller did not mince words about the cast situation.
"Everybody wants to return."
He name-checked the core duo Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen, plus Laurence Fishburne, Katharine Isabelle, Caroline Dhavernas, Lara Jean Chorostecki, Aaron Abrams, and Scott Thompson. In other words: not a polite maybe. They want to do it.
- Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen are in
- Laurence Fishburne, Katharine Isabelle, Caroline Dhavernas, Lara Jean Chorostecki, Aaron Abrams, and Scott Thompson also want to return
What season 4 would actually be
Fuller says he knows exactly what season 4 is. His own read on the original run is pretty frank: season 1 felt a bit like regular TV, season 2 dialed in better, and season 3 is the template he loves. Translation: if season 3 was too artsy or operatic for you, season 4 probably will not change your mind. He also still wants to steer the story into a Silence of the Lambs adaptation.
Quick refresher: that cliffhanger
Hannibal, based on Thomas Harris's books, ran three seasons on NBC with Mikkelsen as refined cannibal psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter and Dancy as FBI profiler Will Graham. It ended with those two taking down their shared nemesis and then literally going over a cliff together. Their survival was left deliberately fuzzy, but a post-credits tag all but winked that they lived and kept up their favorite dinner plans.
The messy part: rights and real-world roadblocks
Even with everyone excited, there is a real-world tangle to sort. Longtime Hannibal producer Martha De Laurentiis has passed away, which Fuller says complicates things. On top of that, rights to the original material are in the process of reverting to author Thomas Harris. Some pieces still sit with MGM/Amazon. In Fuller’s words, it is all being navigated in a way that is trickier to iron out now.
Ratings vs. reputation
Season 3 bled viewers when it aired, but critics were into it; its Rotten Tomatoes score ties season 2 for the show’s best. That gap kind of defines Fuller’s stance: he is leaning into the show Hannibal became, not the more conventional version it started as.
Bottom line: the appetite is there, the legal paperwork is not. If it comes together, expect a season 4 that picks up the operatic, season 3-style thread and, if the rights gods allow, heads toward Silence of the Lambs territory. In the meantime, Hannibal seasons 1-3 are streaming on Prime Video if you want to revisit the cliff.