Bryan Fuller Talks NBC's HANNIBAL TV Series
Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daises, Heroes) recently sat down with EW to discuss Hannibal, the upcoming NBC drama. The show just got picked up for 13 episodes. The first couple of seasons will be based solely on five pages of back story from Thomas Harris' Red Dragon. The series will have Dr. Lecter solving crimes with FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy). Audiences will follow Lecter while he is at large, which I think will be a nice change from our past interaction with the character.
Here is what Fuller had to say about plans for the first season:
It’s before he was incarcerated, so he’s more of a peacock. There is a cheery disposition to our Hannibal. He’s not being telegraphed as a villain. If the audience didn’t know who he was, they wouldn’t see him coming. What we have is Alfred Hitchcock’s principle of suspense — show the audience the bomb under the table and let them sweat when it’s going to go boom. So the audience knows who Hannibal is so we don’t have to overplay his villainy. We get to subvert his legacy and give the audience twists and turns.
Unlike other procedural crime dramas that have super-smart investigators, one of the investigators has a dark secret. Fuller goes on to describe the show by saying:
It really is a love story, for lack of a better description, between these two characters. As Hannibal has said [to Graham] in a couple of the movies, ‘You’re a lot more like me than you realize.’ We’ll get to the bottom of exactly what that means over the course of the first two seasons. But we’re taking our sweet precious time.
With 13 episodes, Hannibal will not have to rush. Fuller states:
Doing a cable model on network television gives us the opportunity not to dally in our storytelling because we have a lot of real estate to cover. I pitched a seven-season arc including stories from various [Thomas Harris] books.
Those of you familiar with the books will be pretty happy, Fuller has only changed the genders of a couple of them. FBI boss Jack Crawford is the same, but Dr. Alan Bloom is becoming Dr. Alana Bloom, and tabloid journalist Freddy Lounds is becoming tabloid blogger Fredricka Lounds.
I am excited to see Hannibal on NBC. Do you plan on tuning in for this show?
I am excited to see Hannibal on NBC. Do you plan on tuning in for this show?