Ready For A Second Course? Hugh Dancy Teases When 'Hannibal' Could Return

Are you still hungry for more Hannibal? Well, put down your menus, because here comes the dessert trolley with a glimmer of hope on the horizon for a revival of Bryan Fuller's mouth-watering masterpiece. While tumbling off a cliff to his apparent death, in the arms of a cannibalistic #MadsMikkelsen, may have seemed like a pretty surefire way to end his tenure on the show, #HughDancy seems ravenous to return to his role as Will Graham. #NBC's stylistic showstopper was cut short after just three seasons, with fans sharpening their knives for more ever since. In an interview with TV Line, Dancy confirms suspicions that if #Hannibal were to return, Will Graham would be in tow.

Showrunner #BryanFuller has been the most vocal on a possible revival, even teasing late 2017 talks, while the rest of the stars have been more reserved on their comments. The likes of Mikkelsen, Dancy, and Laurence Fishburne have all expressed an interest in returning, but now Dancy has reignited the stove on exactly when we could sit down for another session with Dr. Lecter.

A Wait Between Courses

Sadly, you are likely to die of starvation before we actually get to see more Hannibal, as Dancy's most recent interview with TV Line puts the timeframe at about four or five years after its 2015 conclusion:

"My feeling is that, knock on wood, if it came around again, it wouldn’t be a bad thing for it to be four or five years later. That might actually be kind of interesting. How weird would that be, on a personal level, to find yourself back with those people? ‘So… where did we leave off?'”

So, given Dancy's words, we could possibly expect a Hannibal revival somewhere around 2019/2020. Given the fact that he is currently tied into Hulu's The Patch, Gillian Anderson will appear in American Gods, Caroline Dhavernas is in Lifetime's Mary Kills People, and Mikkelsen is in just about anything and everything, the timing might be right to wait just a little longer. With a pretty seamless ending, the other big clincher for Hannibal was always where the story would go next. Dancy seems to think that the future would lead into Silence of The Lambs territory:

"I know where we stood at the end of Season 3, in terms of what he was thinking about. And it did reflect some elements of 'Silence of the Lambs'… He loves that source material, as he would tell you."

There are of course two problems with this. Mainly, Will Graham is only mentioned very briefly in Silence of the Lambs, and it is FBI Agent Clarice Starling who picks up the mantle of Hannibal Lecter's pet project. Also, the first three seasons of Fuller's show were an amalgamation of Thomas Harris's books/the films of Red Dragon and Hannibal, but MGM separately owns the rights to Silence of the Lambs. There would certainly be a Clarice Starling shaped hole in the story, and previous attempts at coming to an amicable arrangement have fallen flatter than a failed Lecter souffle. Fuller had planned to run the series for seven seasons, but with the impending cancellation on the horizon, he fast-tracked some of his later ideas into Season 3 as a fitting finale.

Room For Afters?

That being said, Fuller promised that there were still plenty of places to go, and that Season 4 would have taken an escaped Dr. Lecter to Cuba. The current plan is by the time Hannibal returns (if it ever does), NBC and MGM will have put their differences aside about the rights to Silence of the Lambs, giving Hannibal a whole new lease of life. Alongside the likes of Firefly, Hannibal is one of the most requested show continuations out there and we would be crazy to leave it where it is. One thing is for sure though: With all the reboots and remakes such as Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Hannibal will surely be a case of when and not if, we just need to hope that fans haven't filled up by the time the doctor is back in session.