It’s still hard to believe that Bryan Fuller’s brilliant Hannibal was cancelled after only just three seasons. It was by far one of the best things on television and ever since it got the axe, fans have remained hopeful that somehow, someway, it would get revived.
While today doesn’t exactly bring confirmation of that ever happening, we do have some encouraging words from series star Hugh Dancy, who spoke a bit about what the future holds for Hannibal while doing a panel at the Television Critics Association this weekend.
“First of all, we didn’t have the rights to Silence of the Lambs,” Dancy said. “Bryan had described to me in a kind of overview what he wanted to do with the fourth season had there been one, and it was fantastic. It was really a complete restart in a way, without describing it, because who knows?
God knows, maybe some day we’ll get to do it in the future. I would love that but it took us back to the first season in a very unexpected way, but made total sense of that cliffhanger ending. It seemed justified. It was borne out of a part of one of the books so it was still coming out of that universe, but it wasn’t the Clarice part of Silence of the Lambs.
I just think that if I keep saying it, it might happen. I know there were conversations. I know it was complicated for lots of reasons that I was probably late to the party to know about. The fans honestly were better informed than I was about a lot of stuff. All I can say is I know that Bryan’s very busy, Mads [Mikkelsen] is busy, I’m busy right now but I know that all of us would, I think, happily come back in the future if we could.”
Shortly after, Dancy was asked about a potential movie, and said the following:
“The answer is that I don’t know. I think we would be very happy to return in some capacity. I think the idea of a movie is really interesting. Obviously one of the things we did on the show, Bryan did really, was a very languorous, very image-rich storytelling. How to fit that into a movie, I’m not sure. As I was saying, the version of the fourth season described to me maybe would work like that. I just know I’d like it to happen.”
So, again, none of this really acts as any sort of confirmation, which is a shame, but at least it’s encouraging to hear that Dancy is on board for a fourth season of Hannibal and that ideas have been thrown around.
To be frank, the show’s chances for a revival at this stage are probably pretty slim, but who knows, stranger things have happened. And in today’s day and age with all these new streaming services popping up, someone could easily swoop in and save the day.
