‘Hannibal’ Boss Bryan Fuller Talks Season 4 Miniseries, ‘Silence’ Rights

Now that Rogue One has everyone (rightly) fawning over Mads Mikkelsen again, it’s worth wondering where Bryan Fuller stands on a fourth season of Hannibal, given his tightening schedule of late. A new interview sees the former showrunner clarifying the characters and format of a potential revival, which could explore Silence of the Lambs after all.

Fuller sat down with the Shock Waves podcast (via IndieWire) for a few choice updates on what Hannibal Season 4 might look like, to say nothing of Mikkelsen, Hugh Dancy or Gillian Anderson’s other commitments going forward. Either way, Fuller reiterated what he’d told us about Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier’s dinner guests, assuaging concerns of Will or Hannibal’s fates:

There weren’t going to be any bodies found floating in that lagoon. 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.

In the meantime, rights to Silence of the Lambs will (according to Fuller) revert in August of 2017, after which the showrunner teases that a miniseries could effectively wrap up the story, rather than attempt to retell the 1991 film:

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 … 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.

Other than Fuller’s suggestions, few real details have been clarified of a potential fourth season, one Hugh Dancy claimed “took us back to the first season in a very unexpected way … but it wasn’t the Clarice / Silence of the Lambs storyline.” Fuller and Mikkelsen also previously agreed that a series format was best for any revival, rather than a movie.

In the meantime, Fuller is busy with Starz’s American Gods (though apparently not CBS’ Star Trek: Discovery), so might Hannibal finally earn its revival at some point in 2017?