Despite struggling in the ratings, NBC’s Hannibal was critically acclaimed, and developed a very loyal fanbase during its three years on the small screen, so naturally there were a lot of people upset when the network decided to pull the plug after three seasons. Although it now seems very unlikely, fans are still hopeful that the show might get a fourth season somewhere down the line, and star Hugh Dancy has been speaking to Slash Film about where the series might have went had it not been cancelled.
“First of all, we didn’t have the rights to Silence of the Lambs,” states Dancy. “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,” Dancy added when asked about the possibility of the show returning. “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 Fuller’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. 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.”
Are you still holding out hope for a Hannibal return? Let us know in the comments below…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=vDx6g5ua25E
Originally published January 12, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
