Bryan Fuller's Hannibal season 4 is still in limbo as to whether there will be a fourth season, but the show runner had detailed plans for the series' future despite it getting the axe. First aired in 2013, the show was canceled in 2015 after its third season by NBC. Boundary pushing, decadent, and one of the most gloriously grotesque shows on primetime television, Hannibal's devoted fanbase has been waiting patiently for a chance it'll be resurrected from the TV graveyard, and part of that is due to its creator's refusal to let Hannibal and company go completely.
The series was an interesting take on Thomas Harris' books, Red Dragon, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising, which have all been made into feature films along with another one of Harris' books, The Silence of the Lambs. The Silence of the Lambs made an incredible impact on Hollywood and made film history as one of only three movies to attain the "big five" at the prestigious Academy Awards. While Anthony Hopkins gave a glorious performance as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, also known as "Hannibal the Cannibal", in The Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, and Hannibal, Mads Mikkelsen took on the role fearlessly and added an easy charisma and terror-inducing confidence.
While CBS has green-lit a television series based on Clarice Starling's character, who was played by Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs, Bryan Fuller isn't concerned about how this might affect a fourth season of Hannibal. Instead, he has detailed plans on what he would do - and wants to do - with the future of his characters.
Bryan Fuller Has Some Interesting Plans For Hannibal Season 4
As Fuller has never been able to land the rights to characters like Starling from MGM, Fuller has only been able to include aspects of Harris' other books, though he has certainly taken his own artistic liberties, which many believe are for the better. However, the show runner spoke with Alan Sepinwall about some of his plans for the show's future back in 2015, and he had some pretty incredible ideas for season four and - very likely - beyond. First and foremost, Fuller has stated that he wanted to revisit more of Red Dragon for the show's fourth season before moving beyond that to cover anything with The Silence of the Lambs, so that could have extended into a fifth - or even sixth - season, depending on how much more he had in mind for Harris' source material. Fuller has also said it's possible he would consider a feature film or miniseries option.
Fuller also explained that he had ideas to "re-brand" the relationship between Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Hannibal Lecter. While the interview didn't detail what this type of relationship could contain, many fans of the series who hoped for a romantic relationship between the two characters likely put their hopes into that being an underlying meaning, as the chemistry between them has been heavily pressed subtext throughout the series. Said Fuller, "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." Will Graham and Lecter's relationship has morphed from colleagues to doctor/patient to enemies with many layers in between, so this truly is the cornerstone of the series beyond the character of Lecter himself.
Other details involved his interest in bringing back Anna Chlumsky as Miriam Lass, an FBI trainee who worked under Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) before being captured by Hannibal and kept hostage for two years. Lee Pace, according to Fuller, was whom he wished to cast as Buffalo Bill if he got the opportunity to explore The Silence of the Lambs arc. As for Clarice, who is arguably Hannibal's primary interest in many ways, Fuller said that her inclusion "depends on how Season 4 would have ended." He had expressed interest in casting Ellen Page in the role, but also potentially making Clarice a black woman from a lower-class background, which would essentially give him license to put his own creative stamp on the character in Hannibal's future.