Hannibal is tackling Red Dragon and Dolarhyde will break your heart
By Morgan Jeffery
Wednesday, Jul 22 2015, 16:36 BST

In what could be its final episodes, Hannibal will tackle Red Dragon - and new 'villain' Francis Dolarhyde might just break your heart.

Richard Armitage will take on the role of killer Dolarhyde as Bryan Fuller and his team finally bring Thomas Harris's 1981 novel to television.

"You get six episodes of that story arc which really has only been explored in two movies, for probably 90 minutes at a time," Armitage said, referring to both the 2002 Red Dragon movie and the 1989 film Manhunter.

"So it's a real chance to take that book, which is incredibly detailed, and look at the backstory of where Francis Dolarhyde came from, and how he's emerged as this strange man who's complicated and dark, and at the same time innocent and romantic. Hopefully we're going to open that story up a bit."

For his part, Fuller described Dolarhyde's journey as a "heartbreaking" arc: "You feel so badly for this man who's struggling against his insanity to find love," he explained.

"It's down to Thomas Harris's writing," suggested Armitage. "He really explores this damaged child that he created in Francis Dolarhyde - and it doesn't track in a linear way so you learn about his crimes first, and then you retrace where they came from.

"So all I needed to do was make the connection between the original source material and what Bryan and the writers were putting together."

Hannibal is now airing on Saturday nights on NBC, and continues on Wednesdays on Sky Living in the UK. The first instalment of the Red Dragon adaptation will air July 25 in the US and July 29 in the UK.

Everything You Need To Know About The Next — And Possibly Last — Chapter Of “Hannibal”
The executive producer of NBC’s recently canceled cult favorite tells BuzzFeed News how they brought the Red Dragon storyline to television, if he thinks a fourth season is still possible, and why fans may not actually want more once they see the finale.

posted on Jul. 23, 2015, at 7:43 p.m.
Jarett Wieselman


Nbc / Elisabeth Caren / NBC
On June 22, NBC canceled the critically acclaimed series Hannibal, drawing the ire of fans — aka Fannibals — and spawning rumors that another network would pick up a fourth season. But when Bryan Fuller, who came up with the radically inventive reimagining of author Thomas Harris’ cannibalistic creation, revealed Netflix and Amazon wouldn’t be picking up Hannibal in early July, hope began to wane.
In the meanwhile, the show has gone on. And for the last seven weeks, Season 3 has treated audiences to a European feast for the senses as Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) searched for Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) on the blood-stained streets of Palermo and throughout the gothic vistas of Lithuania. In the end, Hannibal the Cannibal found himself back on U.S. soil and, fearing permanent exile from his frenemy’s life, surrendered to authorities in the July 18 episode, titled “Digestivo,” an hour that brought the European adventure to a close.
Now, as the show preps to launch its next chapter — a six-episode arc revolving around Francis Dolarhyde, a serial killer nicknamed the Tooth Fairy (played by The Hobbit’s Richard Armitage and based on Harris’ Red Dragon novel) — Fuller finds himself facing, what could be, the beginning of the end.
While he’s hopeful that Hannibal can find a new home, he also knows something that Fannibals don’t. And that is what’s to come in the final six episodes of Season 3 — installments that could, according to Fuller, change everyone’s mind about the need for Season 4.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Hugh Dancy and Bryan Fuller on the Hannibal panel at Comic-Con on July 11. Ethan Miller / Getty Images
What have the last few weeks been like for you since NBC canceled the show and fans basically petitioned every other network to pick it up?
Bryan Fuller: It’s definitely been surreal and yet familiar at the same time because this is not my first time at the cancellation rodeo. It’s always beloved to have that much affection for something you create or, in this case, reinterpret for a new audience. The relationship with the Fannibal community has always been one of my favorite things about doing this show because I’m meeting and interacting with a lot of very intelligent young women, primarily, who have found an odd kink that is somehow relatable in its strange perversion of romance that can be interpreted through the prism of a young woman’s mind. That’s exciting. And then you interact with the harder core horror audience, who is also getting something strange out of the proceedings. So in many ways, the diversity of the audience has been a wonderful experience because I see a broad demographic of people who are engaged in this version of the story — even though they might not be represented in the numbers as far as Nielsen is concerned. I absolutely feel the love.
You tweeted that Netflix and Amazon passed on picking up a fourth season of Hannibal. Are you still trying to shop the show around or have you made peace with Season 3 being the end, if that’s the case?
BF: It’s hard to consider what the next move is for Hannibal when the audience hasn’t seen the next six moves. The way we end this season is pretty dramatic and bold on one hand, but also platforms into more story on the other. I’m in the position of knowing what happens when the audience doesn’t, so it feels like the conversations we’re having are half conversations. Let’s have this conversation once everybody has seen the whole season and knows what goes down and with who and who walks away and who doesn’t and how that would inform a Season 4. Because there may be certain members of the audience who feel this is a very satisfying place to end. They may have the closure that they don’t expect because they haven’t gone on the full ride. If we have more, it would be great. I’m excited about the next chapter for Will and Hannibal and what that would be, but I can’t have an informed conversation with the Fannibals because they don’t know what’s to come yet, so even though it is precise about our end on NBC, to discuss the finality of the show without the audience understanding the finality of the season feels like a half conversation.
When you were writing the final episode of Season 3, did you have any sense it could be the last episode, on NBC at least?
BF: There is much more of a sense of finality to the Hannibal series as it existed on NBC with this finale, and that was very intentional because at the beginning of the season I had a conversation with someone at NBC who basically said, “Let’s start talking about new development with you,” and I was like, Oh, this is our last season. [laughs] I wanted to make sure we ended this season in a way that would be satisfying for the audience that has been with us for the last three years, and also have a doorway that is still open for us to continue telling the story of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter.
Would that include, as you said at Comic-Con last year, Schmarice Schmarling?
BF: The fourth season did not include “Schmarice Schmarling” in our design. It’s still very much about Will and Hannibal and a big, bold reinvention of their relationship.



How do you feel about what the show accomplished in the first half of Season 3?
BF: For me, it was always about delving into the characters and their experience with grief and grieving the events from the end of Season 2. So it was designed to be much more introspective and much more about the insidiousness of relationships and the toxicity of relationships — all the things we wish we could hold onto, but desperately need not to. It was a very thoughtful journey and I think, for some viewers, it was probably too thoughtful and too introspective, but it’s exactly the show that I wanted to produce and the story I wanted to tell.
The European arc, based on Harris’ novel Hannibal, ended with Hannibal choosing Will over his freedom and, I know this is going to make me sound like a lunatic, but it was one of the most romantic things I’ve ever seen on television.
BF: This is a romance and that was something we wanted to make sure was intact. These are two human beings who care about each other deeply because they know the other one understands them in a way no one else can. It is very powerful and intoxicating to talk to somebody and realize that they actually do understand you in a deep, meaningful way. It doesn’t happen often. When you find somebody who absolutely gets you, that is a beautiful thing and it is hard not to want to be in the presence of somebody who really, truly understands you. It’s a rare, rare thing and that dynamic is something that is going to be threaded through the next six episodes and really reopened and explored in the finale where we get to understand exactly what was happening between those two men in that moment when Hannibal turned himself in.
Both of them were coming from a place where they want to end the other and then they save each other — or [were] saved by the various women in the piece — from Mason Verger. And so, their relationship, in a way, was put on pause. There’s this truce that then begins to get whittled away at as they enter one another’s orbit yet again and they realize the unfinished business they had between them in the first part of the season is now back on the table and they have to deal with it and they’re not going to escape it.

This week’s episode sees a three-year time jump. Why was that break important to the storytelling?
BF: The demarcation in time helps to reset the characters and also gets you a little bit of fun in “Who are they now?” Three years is a while. Like, I’m still pretty much the same person I was three years ago, but I also didn’t have my best friend gut me and pursue him across the world only to have him try to cut open my skull and eat my brain. So a lot has changed and we wanted to give [the characters] enough time for new lives to begin. We wanted to have the story relaunch so that Will would have enough time to develop a relationship that gives him something he has not experienced yet in his life, which is the capacity to laugh and smile and enjoy the things he’s been away from most of his life. And I love casting Nina Arianda in the Molly role because she has a levity and a comedy to her and seeing Will genuinely react to her with humor and enjoyment also gave us the opportunity to demonstratively illustrate a new Will Graham.
Does Hannibal know Will has a wife now? I can’t imagine that will sit very well with him.
BF: We see him figure that out by making observations and we should be very nervous about that. Will’s married and has a family and that is a threat to Hannibal’s relationship with Will.
Are Gillian Anderson (Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier) and Katharine Isabelle (Margot Verger) still part of the show, three years later?
BF: Yes. Gillian comes back into the fold in Episode 10 and continues through to the finale of the season and Katie comes back as well, not as prominently as she was in the first half, but we do see her and catch up and understand what the last three years has meant for her as well.
Jack Crawford also went through a lot in Italy. What kind of man do we find three years later?
BF: Jack is somebody who lost a bit of his humanity in the last three years. In Episode 9, we see that Jack has hardened. In the first part of the season, Jack was only pursuing Hannibal to save Will from the trap that he inadvertently steered him into. Jack has been twice burned by Will and Hannibal’s relationship and ultimately caught him with Will’s help, but he’s also a guy who wants to catch the Great Red Dragon and has been down this road before and isn’t going to be nearly as hesitant as he once was.



In the July 25 episode, titled “The Great Red Dragon,” Dr. Chilton says that Hannibal the Cannibal has “niche appeal,” but the Tooth Fairy is a “four-quadrant serial killer.” Is that a meta moment, poking fun at the television industry?
BF: Absolutely. That was very intentional. I wanted to say, “We get that this show is niche and that Hannibal Lecter himself — with his fussy aesthetics — [is] going to have limited appeal.” [With] the Red Dragon, who is a more accessible killer in his own right, there was absolutely a commentary on the show and its place in pop culture as well as the Red Dragon mythology coming into light in the tale we’re telling. I felt like it was pertinent enough to comment on within the parameters of the show.
Red Dragon is a story that’s been told three times before — first in Harris’ 1981 novel, then in Michael Mann’s 1986 film Manhunter, and most recently in 2002’s Red Dragon. How do you feel yours is different?
BF: Tom Noonan [played Francis] as this wonderful outsider, yet, in moments, captured your sympathy. Ralph Fiennes, up until the end of Red Dragon — which kind of unraveled under some really shitty pop psychology — was capturing the character from the book quite nicely but then had to play emotionally stunted in a way that was not true to the character or the book. It was just pop psychology bullshit and completely invalidated the character in my mind and was kind of a lazy catchall for the climax. For me, Red Dragon was such a confusing experience because I look at Ralph Fiennes in so much of the film and he’s brilliant and Anthony Hopkins is wonderful and yet there is a soullessness about the storytelling that prevents me from really connecting to the material. I thought he did a fine job and was so masterful as an actor, but a script convenience totally undermined a great performance.
Now we have Richard Armitage, who is closer to Ralph Fiennes’ interpretation but with a steelier character as indicated in the book where he wouldn’t fall for pop psychology. He is actually as smart as anybody in the piece, is military trained, and has a precision and meticulousness with his attacks that slowly begins to wobble under the duress of a human connection — not only with Reba McClaine, played beautifully by Rutina Wesley, but also Hannibal Lecter himself. There’s aspects that we’ve seen a couple of times before in previous adaptations that you will see again in this adaptation of the Red Dragon story, but informed with character dynamics that are completely unique to our series.
The episode opens with a really unsettling sequence where Richard twists and contorts his body — was that CGI?

BF: That is all Richard’s body. We talked at length about that because we wanted it to feel like An American Werewolf in London, that it was a transformation taking place and things were popping and locking and moving as he is becoming the Great Red Dragon. Richard did a lot of research into body movements and this wonderful dance style that he found and really explored and made his own. Richard was just a gem, such a fantastic addition to the series because he, like Mads and Hugh, is such a consummate professional and so well prepared for his role and collaborative. Richard would send me his journals for the character and then we would discuss what was going on between them — the them being Francis and the Great Red Dragon — and maybe he’s not as insane as you would assume!
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Hannibal airs Saturdays at 10 p.m. ET/9 CT on NBC.

Profile of a killer: Get to know ‘Hannibal’s’ Red Dragon
Brittany Lovely 2:30 pm, July 23, 2015 Hannibal



Three years after the events of “Digestivo,” Hannibal returns this week with the introduction of “The Great Red Dragon.”

“There was an opinion he wanted. A strange view he needed to share; a mindset he has to recover…’I have to see Lecter.'” -Will Graham, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (1981)

The first passage to ever mention Hannibal Lecter occurs early on in Thomas Harris’Red Dragon. Hannibal’s surrender at the close of last week’s episode left viewers off at the opening passage of the book that started it all. If you’ve read the novel chances are you already felt a sense of familiarity over the past two and half seasons. Framing Lounds’ death in a flaming wheelchair, Will’s musings on Hannibal as God in the Norman Chapel, the abundance of stray dogs, are each details from Red Dragon. But one paramount detail from the novel was always missing in Hannibal.

The focus of Fuller’s Hannibal has always been the relationship between Hannibal Lecter and FBI profiler Will Graham. The battle of Will versus Hannibal seduced audiences. Their shared trains of thought, the psychological torture, the incredibly intricate meals, combined to lure fans to a place where they felt comfortable enough to dismiss the corruption that carried their story along. Francis Dolarhyde’s tale of isolation runs a strikingly parallel path.



Francis Dolarhyde exists at the center of Hannibal‘s (most likely) final story. He is a man whose killing spree caught the attention of Harris’ most infamous character, Hannibal Lecter. Appearing only in brief passages, the air of mystery surrounding Hannibal was enough for Harris to expand upon in his subsequent novels, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Rising, and Hannibal. But Dolarhyde, his first fully developed killer, serves as the catalyst that brings Will back to Hannibal three years after cutting all ties to the FBI and Lecter. Which is just what Hannibal needs at this moment.

Hannibal, the series, would not be complete without his story. In fact, we’d go as far to say that Francis Dolarhyde will be Fuller’s Clarice Sterling– the one character no adaptation can touch after. Casting Richard Armitage in the role almost guarantees that prediction.

Who are we meeting?
Hannibal season 3 episode 7 threading film
The Tooth Fairy, Red Dragon, Francis Dolarhyde, are they the same person? Yes. And no. The tale that begins in episode 8, “The Great Red Dragon,” will focus on the man Francis Dolarhyde and his “Becoming” to a higher self, the Dragon. It is very much a story of one man versus insanity. Not unlike the transformation that Will went through under the influence of Hannibal, Dolarhyde battles the fantasy life that engulfs his sane mind and awakens his suppressed urges developed in his less than ideal childhood upbringing.

Born with a cleft lip and left by his mother, Dolarhyde never truly found acceptance, but what he interpreted as “Love” from his grandmother who took Dolarhyde out of an orphanage at age five. His first venture into the world was intended to torture his mother at the instruction of his grandmother. From a young age, Francis felt the desire to protect his grandmother, more so as her heath deteriorated. But in his pursuit to find a means of standing up to potential danger, he found a release for the overwhelming feelings he classified as “Love” through murdering chickens.

Dolarhyde went on to boarding school and the army, where strength, stamina, and a gift from a surgeon allowed him to exit as a force of discipline with a slightly corrected face. He took his grandmother under his care until her death.

Harris’ language has often been described by Fuller as “purple and operatic.” This language resonates Dolarhyde’s internal struggle between accepting his isolation as a blessing, a gateway to a greater Becoming. The process of Becoming is a disturbing narrative of personal strength, graphic recreations of home videos, and a one track obsessive mind.


However, Dolarhyde is a villain whose moments of human connection, though rare and fleeting, are crafted in such a way that they almost allow you to forget the brutality that he is capable of during the 27 days he is not out murdering families. You’re filled with the desire to see a man who takes a blind coworker to experience a tiger up close in a way only she could appreciate, find some salvation. Then again, this same man murdered two families, shred them with shattered mirrors, and left them on display.

Divine inspiration
The first two Dolarhyde-centric episodes, “The Great Red Dragon,” and “…and the Woman Clothed in the Sun,” reference the title of a William Blake painting and the ultimate inspiration for Dolarhyde’s transformation. The painting is not a prop. Rather, it is what Dolarhyde sees as the ultimate representation of his higher self. Who or what he is trying to become.

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun
“The picture stunned him the first time he saw it. Never before has he seen anything that approached his graphic thought.” –Red Dragon

Richard Armitage is taking on the daunting task of portraying the role that has only been seen before by Tom Noonan in 1986 and more recently by Ralph Fiennes in the 2006 film, Red Dragon. Something about Richard Armitage’s Dolarhyde, however briefly we’ve seen him thus far, will perhaps be the best interpretation of the chilling monster lifted from Harris’ pages.

If you missed the extended footage from Comic-Con take a look here.


Red Dragon is the book that launched the Hannibal franchise. Unfortunately, this story may also close what is perhaps the most chilling interpretation of Thomas Harris’ work. Fuller and company are not leaving fans without first presenting a gripping narrative. Dolarhyde rivals Hannibal’s composure, elegance, and backstory on all accounts. His ability to pull all the key players of Hannibal into his orbit is worth tuning in to see.

Watch Hannibal season 3, episode 8, “The Great Red Dragon,” Saturday, July 25 at 10:00 p.m. ET on NBC.

Are you looking forward to the Red Dragon on ‘Hannibal?’

Das ist auch ein interessanter Artikel mit vielen Hintergrund-Informationen, danke dafür!

Richard Armitage@RCArmitage

Richard Armitage retweetete Hypable

.@NBCHannibal @DeLaurentiisCo @BryanFuller A very succinct piece.

Kurz vor knapp habe ich es jetzt geschafft, schnell noch "Roter Drache" mit Ralph Fiennes zu gucken (damit ich weiß, was mich in etwa erwartet ).
Also, RF hat seine Sache durchaus auch gut gemacht (bin eh ein Fan von ihm), aber die Geschichte von FD ist m.E. wirklich zu kurz erzählt und wird dem Buch eigentlich nicht gerecht. Da sind die 6 Folgen im Rahmen von "Hannibal" wirklich besser geeignet, um die ganze Story zu erzählen.

Fairytale Love ‏@Vueltasdelamor

In a local newspaper of my city in Spain.They tall about @NBCHannibal and of course about @RCArmitage @BryanFuller

Former Coventry student Richard Armitage makes Twitter explode during latest Hannibal episode
13:00, 10 AUGUST 2015
BY JAMES RODGER
The latest episode of the US drama series saw the Hobbit star undergo a transformation into the Red Dragon


Richard Armitage in the latest episode of Hannibal

Former Coventry student Richard Armitage was at the centre of last night's Hannibal episode, which for the first time ever focused on a protagonist other than Hannibal Lecter or Will Graham.

Armitage - who attended Pattinson College in the city where he gained A-Levels in music and English - has also appeared in Spooks and Robin Hood, as well as The Hobbit trilogy.

His latest venture has seen him star in Hannibal, the recently axed television series which has drew acclaim from critics and audiences alike.


As Francis Dolarhyde, Armitage underwent a transformation in episode ten of the third series, titled '... And The Woman Clothed in Sun', as his character became the terrifying Red Dragon.

Dolarhyde - a serial killer in the series - also entered the next level of his relationship with Reba McClane, played by Rutina Wesley.

Will is getting closer to finding Dolarhyde, but all the talk after the episode was of that transformation scene.

'Hannibal' creator: 'I wanted to be sure we had an ending for the story'
'We had gotten ridiculously preferential treatment on this show by the network,' says Bryan Fuller
By Alan Sepinwall @Sepinwall | Saturday, Aug 29, 2015 11:00 PM


Tonight, Bryan Fuller and company gave us the end of "Hannibal" as we know it. Even if the money and logistics can ever be worked out for some kind of movie or miniseries featuring Mads Mikkelsen, Hugh Dancy, and this creative team, the show's time as an ongoing TV series is done, and it ended in a way that functions as a conclusion to the story, even if it's one that may outrage some fans. (My finale review is here.)

Earlier this week, I spoke with Fuller about that ending, potential ways he could continue the franchise, the challenges of finally doing a direct adaptation of "Red Dragon," and a lot more — including me having a very different interpretation of the post-credits scene than what Fuller intended — coming up just as soon as you take the key from around my neck...

At what point in the season did you realize that this is how you were going to end it?

Bryan Fuller: Probably about halfway through the season. We're always looking for a way to end a season in a way we could end the series. We never knew we were coming back. At the beginning of season 3, NBC was talking to me about new development, and that was a pretty big indicator to me that they weren't planning on picking up a season 4. So I wanted to be sure we had an ending for the story we were telling, but also leave room for a continuation of the tale of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham should we get the option to tell more of it.

So you have an idea in mind in the event of something more where this is not the end of the story?

Bryan Fuller: Right. In my mind, the most interesting chapter of Will Graham's story has yet to be told.

Once NBC made their decision official and you couldn't find a buyer elsewhere for a fourth season, were you at peace with the idea that this is it?

Bryan Fuller: I knew the writing was on the wall. I knew that we had gotten ridiculously preferential treatment on this show by the network. The fact that they allowed us to tell the tales we were telling, and in a manner that was much more suited to a cable audience than a broadcast network audience. They were bending over backwards to accommodate us, and I knew they could only bend so far with ratings as bad as we had! (laughs)

Where do things stand now? What are the options?

Bryan Fuller: Martha De Laurentiis is looking into financing for a feature film. The season 4 that we were going to tell is such a restart and reimagining that I still hope in some way that we get to tell a version of that, if not "Silence of the Lambs" itself, as a miniseries. I would love to return this cast to the big screen from whence they came, and Hannibal Lecter to the big screen, from whence he came. It seems perfectly symmetrical.

Last time we talked, you put the odds on a fourth season at 50-50. What would you say the odds are now for any kind of filmed continuation?

Bryan Fuller: Oh, God. I have no idea. I think they're less than 50/50, and not in our favor. But I'm curious to see how folks respond to the finale, and then also if that satisfies them? If that feels like "We got a conclusion to our story and it's wrapped up in a bow, and we don't need anymore," then the audience will dictate. But if the audience is still there for the show and still wants a continuation of that story, I'll continue looking for ways to give it to them.

Why does Will, to your mind, pull Hannibal off the cliff. Is it what Bedelia said about how he can't live with him or without him, so they have to go down together?

Bryan Fuller: Essentially, the conclusion of the season really started very early in the Italian chapter of the story, where Will is admitting if he doesn't kill Hannibal Lecter, he has the potential to become him. Then he escapes that trajectory with Hannibal being institutionalized, and finding a family, and once being exposed to the heroin needle again, as it were, he's realizing how much of an addict he actually is, but is aware enough to know, and to start making moves toward his previous goal of ending Hannibal. And he's willing to do what it takes. Bedelia says, "Can't live with him, can't live without him." It's not necessary for him to survive this, in order to accomplish what he needs to accomplish. There's something so fated about that final act of Will's. And also, the awareness of this is perhaps the best solution for both of them.

Hannibal looks so happy when Will is embracing him. Does he know what's going to happen next, or is he thrown for a loop when they go over the cliff?

Bryan Fuller: I think Hannibal is thrown for a loop when they go over. In that final scene between them, it was Hugh Dancy and I talking about what those last moments that we see of Hannibal and Will in the series on NBC, how they need to connect, and yet Will can't totally surrender to Hannibal, because he's still Will Graham and still a human being, but he also knows that it's going to be very difficult to go back to his family life, seeing his wife murdered over and over again in his mind every time that he looks at her. Any possibility of a relationship that could save him from Hannibal Lecter seems dimmer and dimmer in his mind, that it is acceptable to him that he not survive.

You've talked about this relationship in romantic terms. Bedelia makes that even more explicit in some of her conversations with both men this season. Was there any thought given to having them do more than embrace at the end, or would that in some way be diminishing the very unique and strange nature of their relationship?

Bryan Fuller: Mads and Hugh, there were a lot of takes where they got very intimate, and lips were hovering over lips. I definitely had the footage to go there, because Mads and Hugh were so game. They called me and warned me: "We really went for it!" And then I saw the dailies, I thought there was a fine line from that #Hannigraham fan fiction motive to give the hardcore audience exactly what they want in terms of this actually being a homosexual relationship between these two men, and what is authentic for the characters in that final moment. I mean, it's not "Brokeback Mountain." Mads isn't gonna be spitting on his hand and getting to work. (laughs) We felt we had to keep it genuine to the tone of the relationship as we've been telling it in the series, and even in that moment when Will asks if Hannibal is in love with him, and Bedelia says, "Of course he is, ya big queen!" Even in that moment, it's not quite dipping into the physical passions that would be the case if they were both homosexual. But I feel one is ominisexual and one is heterosexual and there's a lot of influence going back and forth, who knows with a six pack of beer what would happen.

Speaking of Bedelia, the series' final image isn't them going off the cliff, but Bedelia waiting to serve a guest who is never going to come. How did you decide that was the image you wanted to end it on.

Bryan Fuller: Well, that's a really interesting interpretation of the scene. You think she cut off her own leg and is going to serve it to somebody?

She seems as if she is throwing a dinner party.

Bryan Fuller: (laughs) No, that's our little nod to the audience that perhaps Hanibal could have survived that cliff dive. She's sitting at the table with her leg on the table and she's looking absolutely terrified, and she grabs the fork and hides it under her napkin and waits for whoever's going to return. This woman still has some fight in her. We don't know if Hannibal is indeed serving her her leg, or is it Hannibal's uncle Robertus, or Lady Murasaki, or is it Will Graham?

So it was just your tease for the possibility of more?

Bryan Fuller: Yes. But I love your interpretation! (laughs) I love the thought that she's thinking, "Fuck! I cut off my leg for no reason!"

Well, you left a lot of ambiguity about how much control Hannibal did ultimately have over her, how much she had figured out how to survive being with him, whether she had been infected with his particular brand of madness.

Bryan Fuller: I love that you have that interpretation. Part of me doesn't want anybody to know my confirmation of that and just see what people would think in reaction to that interpretation.

For what it's worth, I spoke about this with another TV critic who had watched it with his wife. He agreed with me, she thought we were both insane. So she's on your side.

Bryan Fuller: That was the original intention. No, somebody has got her, and will she or will she not survive. And what's so fun is that on the song that Siouxsie Sioux wrote, we hear her say, "I will survive, I will survive," as we're pushing in on Bedelia, and that could mean she's singing from Hannibal's perspective and it means he has survived and will eat this woman now, or Bedelia's point of view that it's like, "You may have cut off this leg, but I've got this fork and I'm gonna do some damage before it's done."

When you went to Siouxsie Sioux about doing a song for the finale, what did you tell her that she wanted?

Bryan Fuller: It was interesting. She was like, "I want to write this song, and what are the things I should really be thinking about?" And I was like, "this is a love story. A love story between a full-fledged psychopath and someone who has nascent psychopathic abilities." Actually, Hannibal Lecter is not a psychopath; he's something else entirely. But it's a love relationship between two men: one of them is a cannibal, and one of them understands those cannibalistic instincts all too well. What she came back with was "Love Crime," and it was so Bond-ian, and it felt like a big, sweeping song, that, when I heard it, I said, "This has gotta go over the fight in the finale."

In previous years and storylines, you threw in different winks and nods and spins on familiar Lecter moments, but with "Red Dragon," you were doing a more straightforward adaptation. Was it daunting to finally have source material you had to stick relatively close to, or fun?

Bryan Fuller: It was both daunting and fun, but I would say more fun. It was very exciting to cast Richard Armitage and Rutina Wesley in those roles, and really focus on them as characters worthy of the rest of the incredible cast of characters on the show, and tell their story equally with the stories we were telling with Will and Hannibal and Bedelia and Alana and Jack. I was excited about that, about bringing the vivid imagery of the Blake paintings to life in our hallucinogenic way. What I found often was, "We already did this before, so how do we reimagine this?" The book was pretty picked over by the time we got to season 3 in terms of quotes and situations we had cannibalized — wink, wink — intentionally early on in the series. So the challenge was trying not to repeat those things, or, in repeating them, trying to subvert them or present them in a way that was an alternate perspective to how they were seen earlier, like the Freddie Lounds death. Knowing we wanted to burn somebody in a wheelchair again, since we had played that gag in the second season, quite intentionally holding onto the thought that that was going to be the inspiration for how Chilton was going to be killed, or attempted to be killed in the third season, in our homage to "South Park." Oh, no, they killed Kenny, you bastards!

So if the story continues in some form, Chilton would be back and covered in hideous burn makeup?

Bryan Fuller: I would love it.

But would Raul Esparza love it?

Bryan Fuller: Raul is so game for anything and everything. The highlight of our gag reels is Raul Esparza in that makeup cracking everybody up, breaking into song, doing the character that Jim Carrey did on "In Living Color," Fire Marshal Bill. So he would do more of the same. So he would do more of the same. And, you know, grafting technology has come a long way in the last five years, and he would look somewhat like Raul Esparza again, but perhaps a little melted.

Was there a scene from "Red Dragon" you were particularly excited to present your take on?

Bryan Fuller: The tiger sequence was actually one that I was really looking forward to, because I believe it is the most romantic thing I've read in modern literature. That a man is so elegant and eloquent that he devises a way for a blind woman to experience the zoo because he cares so much about her, is such a beautiful act. So I was looking forward to seeing that from a blind person's perspective, and enhancing those colors, so what the audience is experiencing is a heightened reality of what she's imagining based on what she's being told by Francis Dolarhyde. It's such a beautiful romance, even though it's horrific and one of them is a terrible killer of families, but it's a beautiful story, and I was really looking forward to telling the romance of Reba McClane and Francis Dolarhyde, because it struck me as so poignant and beautiful in the novel, and I'm just thrilled with what Rutina and Richard did with it.

How was Dolarhyde picking his victims? In the book, his lab processes their home movies, but that's obviously not a thing that happens now.

Bryan Fuller: Social media. Hannibal answered the question to Will. Just check your Facebook privacy settings.

You and Mads had several years to present your own spin on Hannibal, and he wasn't really that much like the Cox or Hopkins versions. Did you have any pause about having him recite a lot of those familiar taunting lines of dialogue when Will and others visited him in his cell?

Bryan Fuller: I did. There are definitely scenes where I was like, "Wow, this is exactly the same," but I felt a certain obligation to hardcore fans of the book. Despite us altering the story in our fanfiction approach to the novels, there are still iconic scenes that I as a Fannibal wanted to see Mads do. I wanted to see him put on those sweaters.

You've spoken before about wanting to avoid, wherever possible, the rape and women-in-peril tropes that have become so overused in serial killer stories. With Dolarhyde's M.O., and with some of the things he does to women like Reba and Molly, there was no way to entirely avoid that. How do you feel you did in terms of approaching that part of the material?

Bryan Fuller: It's such a tentpole of the novel, and we really needed the switcheroo to be done with the body and believing that Francis Dolarhyde is dead, there was a lot of cringing and crying with Reba and those scenes, because she was trying to modulate her performance. I thought a lot about it because I was like, "Oh, I don't want her to cower so much." But if you're in that situation, it's actually emotionally honest to be terrified in that way. So I did argue with myself quite a bit, going back and forth about how much vulnerability to show with Reba. I loved the spirit and the fight that Rutina brought to the role. I love that she tries to gouge out his eyes at one point, and he stops her. There is more fight than you've seen with the previous Rebas. But still, she is a victim in those circumstances. That was hard to write around and avoid, and hopefully, we paid some chits forward with how Nina Arianda portrayed Molly in the circumstance with home invasion, which was also very horror movie trope: home invader, and sneaking and skulking and scares, and a big run for a getaway. All of that was horror movie tropes, but for me, what made it fresh is that she could have very easily died. We talked a lot about her dying in that episode, but after I cast Nina Arianda, I said, "Fuck it, I can't kill Nina Arianda like that. She's too awesome. So let's have her be the hero of her own story.

What conversations did you have with NBC standards and practices about Dolarhyde biting off Chilton's lips on camera?

Bryan Fuller: I can't tell you how delightful Joanna Jameson, our standards and practices executive, has been throughout this entire experience, and how collaborative she's been. My approach with her has always been one of utmost honesty. She knows the show that we're trying to make, and what we're trying to get away with, and she wants us to get away with as much as the broadcast standards and practices will allow her to allow us to get away with. It was always a conversation with her. I said, "We're going to have this thing where he's going to bite off somebody's lips." And she says, "Well, you know how to light it then. Don't let me see too much red, keep it as dark as you can, and silhouette the lips so you don't let me see too much gore, and we'll let you get away with as much as possible." And we submit a cut to it, and she's like, "Okay, we're on that shot for a little too long; shave it down for me." I shave off four frames, and she's like, "Shave it down a little more" and I shave off four more frames, and she goes, "I suppose that's good enough." I wish on everybody who works in network television to have a broadcast standards and practices executive as collaborative and willing to fight more for the show as she did. All the Fannibals should send Joanna Jameson a big thank you.

In the past, you've said that you wanted the violence on the show to be operatic and almost like science-fiction, because you weren't interested in evoking all the real violence out there in the world. And for the most part, the most graphic things on the show are done to dead bodies. This season, though, we had incidents like the lip-biting, or the eel swimming right down Mason's throat, that seemed much more graphic and explicit than anything you'd done before, especially since they involved victims who were still alive at the time. Why the shift?

Bryan Fuller: In a way, it felt like it was all a part of this devil's bargain. All the characters made this devil's bargain with Hannibal, and they suffer for it. In fact, the only person who appears to get away with somewhat of a happy ending is Alana Bloom. You see her flying away with her wife and her child. You see one getting away, and you know she's going to be surrounded by men with guns for the rest of her life to make sure Hannibal doesn't come in through the window. It really was about where the story was taking us. The investigations, where we've used the pendulum to reverse time and allow Will to crawl through a wormhole into the headpsace of John Malkovich or whoever was doing the murders and see them that way, it felt with Chilton in particular, it was a little bit of that "Let's kill Kenny" zeal of, "Oh, we've got to do this to Chilton." He got shot in the face, he got gutted, and part of the meta fun of the show was that we're going to do something horrible to Raul Esparza every season, and the hope is that you really dig it.

Originally, Europe was supposed to be the entirety of this season. At what point did you realize it couldn't fill that much time?

Bryan Fuller: It was in the breaking of the story. I love the Italian chapter, and I love the grand departure from the procedural story. Creatively, this was a breath of fresh air for me. "Oh, this is the 'Hannibal' series that I always wanted to tell." I am not a big fan of the procedural storytelling. To me, that is the artsy-fartsy "Hannibal" that I've always wanted to explore. And I love that we shifted the dynamic — not away from Will, but to include Bedelia, and then creating that dynamic of the brides of Hannibal having to snipe at each other through the second half of the season because both of them think they understand Hannibal, and both of them are correct and both of them are fucked, as far as their fates go.

There were some viewer objections to the Europe arc in the way it went all in on that dreamlike, artsy-fartsy narrative quality. Did you feel you had maybe reached a limit of how far you could take that approach?

Bryan Fuller: Honestly, it didn't really occur to me to say, "Ohmigod, is this too far?" As a storyteller you go, "This is a story I understand and I'm going to tell it." As opposed to having an agenda of, "Who can I make happy with this version of the story?" If we leapt back into a crime procedural story after the trauma of everything people experienced at the end of season 2, that to come back out of it and to be investigating murders felt disingenuous to the characters. So much of what "Hannibal" is and how we've been telling stories on "Hannibal" has been subjective to the characters' experience. This is the headpsace that we're all in after all of have been so brutally deceived by someone so close to us. So it felt like it wasn't organic place to take the characters, because in reality, that's what it felt like to me. That's the headspace that they are in. They are in a traumatized headspace. They are in shock. That Italian chapter is so much PTSD, and then it's not even post, it's traumatic stress disorder. So you have a feeling that you're walking around in a dream, because everything you've experienced is so terrible that you're trying to wrap your head around it. That is very much the arc of the first chapter of the season: trying to get back to reality, trying to swim through the muddy murk of the trauma, and get back to a place where you can identify reality as reality and you just don't feel like you're trapped in your own insanity.

Where did the idea for the kaleidoscopic sex scene between Alana and Margot come from?

Bryan Fuller: Originally, it came from Caroline Dhavernas, who came to me between seasons. We were doing a commentary for one of the blu-rays, and we asked them to remove it from the commentary to avoid spoiling it, but she said during the scene where she has the five-way with her and Mads and Hugh and the Stag Man and Margot that her only regret was not being naked in bed with Margot, because she got to be naked in bed with Mads and Hugh. And I thought, "That's actually a really great direction for the character, and it makes sense for all of these reasons." I always wanted the sex scenes on "Hannibal" to feel the way that really amazing amyl nitrate-fueled sex can be, where you're out of your body, and your flesh is merging with the flesh of your partner, and it's also a great metaphor for penetration in many ways. A wheel of legs is like scissor sistering all around the clock. I just thought, "What a cool way to do a sex scene that is poetic and also reminiscent of really good sex in a very strange way." I wanted it to feel like sex, hypnotic, like you're giving yourself up to sins of the flesh.

And Alana's decision to essentially appropriate Hannibal's wardrobe for herself?

Bryan Fuller: Mine. I wanted her in suits for season 3 and sat with (costume designer) Christopher Hargadon and these beautiful houndstooth suits, and said, "This is Alana's look for this season. She's been so immersed in Hannibal's world and trying to come up out of it. It's like the slime clinging to her body are these patterned suits.

I saw a number of viewers say they found it genuinely upsetting or sad to see him in those drab coveralls while she essentially got to strut around in his clothes.

Bryan Fuller: I thought that was fascinating. He's gone to a blank slate, and now she's the one who's holding the strings.

Going back even earlier in the season, how did the corpse-turned-hart-turned-stag come about?

Bryan Fuller: We were in the writers room, and we were talking about, "What can you do to a body to twist it and break it in such a manner that it resembles a smaller piece of the body?" Then we talked about the heart, and then the tarot cards of the heart with three swords in it. And from there, when I was doing a polish on the script, I changed it to the Franksentag.

I still have nightmares about that.

Bryan Fuller: That's great. I want action figures of it.

If this is really it, other than finding a way to adapt "Silence of the Lambs," is there anything you wish you could have done with these characters and this world that you didn't?

Bryan Fuller: The story of the fourth season, which is a rebranding of the Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter relationship, that was very exciting. 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. But who knows what the future may bring?

You talked before about NBC really indulging you over the years, and your own lack of interest in the procedural stuff. In a million years, would they have allowed you to come in at the start of the series with the season 3 aesthetic? Or did you have to slowly immerse them in the water and heat it up or else they'd have never let you get that far?

Bryan Fuller: Absolutely. We had to earn their trust. We had to be able to say, "This is the procedural version of the show." If the show was a huge hit, and really connected with an audience in a way that "The Blacklist" did, they would have said, "No, this is the format of the show, and you're keeping to it." But because the show wasn't a huge hit, and had a very niche but passionate audience, I think they saw no harm in allowing me to play.

Hannibal is a character who's had a long and successful run in other media. Why do you think this one didn't connect with a larger audience?

Bryan Fuller: I wanted to be very authentic to the tone of the books, and very authentic to Thomas Harris. And I think there is a version of Hannibal, say if you cast James Spader, or Hugh Grant as Hannibal Lecter, and leaned into the slightly campier, more accessible aspects of the films that we began to see in the later movies, then that might have connected in a way that pop culture understood Hannibal. But I chose to go back to the source material and make it as genuine to the source material and my fanfiction approach as I could, and give it a level of sobriety and dignity, even I look at the show as a very black comedy. It was very literary, it was very pretentious, and very niche. I can't say I'm terribly surprised that it didn't find an audience. Initially, there was a lot of fatigue with the character, and people felt the character was played out, and I heard from countless people how they weren't even interested in seeing the show because they weren't interested in Hannibal Lecter again. But the casting of Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter gave us, for me, the best version of Hannibal Lecter. But perhaps not the most commercial.

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

August 29, 2015 8:00pm PT by Amber Dowling

‘Hannibal’s’ Bryan Fuller on the "Obscure" Finale, Movie Hopes: "There’s a Few Ways to Go"

"I’m still hoping that we get to tell that story in some way," Fuller tells THR about a possible film continuation. "There is something in the novel Hannibal that has not been done in any of the adaptations and I would love to explore that."

"I’m still hoping that we get to tell that story in some way," Fuller tells THR about a possible film continuation. "There is something in the novel Hannibal that has not been done in any of the adaptations and I would love to explore that."

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from the Hannibal series finale, "The Wrath of the Lamb."]

That's all she wrote, Hannibal fans.

Saturday's series finale featured Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) joining forces to take down Francis Dolarhyde, a.k.a. the Red Dragon (Richard Armitage), once and for all via a complex plan hatched in Will's head. As the former FBI consultant helped Hannibal escape prison in order to tempt the serial killer into revealing himself, Dolarhyde caught up with the men to unleash a blood bath.

During the series' final scene Dolarhyde was indeed eliminated, but rather than celebrate, Will and Hannibal clutched each other on the edge of an eroding cliff. "This is all I ever wanted for you," says Hannibal right before the pair head over the edge into the watery abyss below and the end credits cue.

In order to get some closure on that final scene, find out what was supposed to come next and get an update on the potential Hannibal movie, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with showrunner Bryan Fuller.

Why did you want to end it this way?

The story we were telling with Will in this season was one where a fated conclusion was inevitable. Early on in the Italian chapter, Will Graham essentially said, “I have to kill Hannibal Lecter or I’m going to become Hannibal Lecter.” He later finds deviation from that course with a family unit that gives him a grounding that he never had before. When he is pulled back into the FBI and Hannibal Lecter’s orbit, it’s essentially a drug addict returning to the needle and not being strong enough to beat it the second time. He realizes his original intention in the Italian arc is still valid and has to be respected. We knew at the end of this season it was going to be some sort of Sherlock and Moriarty off the Reichenbach falls.

Should viewers assume one or both of them are dead given that this is a series finale now?

I don’t think you can assume anything. It’s very intentionally left obscure but hopefully somewhat satisfying for the audience. If there is a continuation of this story with Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter and Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen in those roles then of course they survived. And if not then it’s a big fat question mark.

How was it to craft that final moment between the two characters given their romance?

It came out of a conversation with Hugh Dancy. We were talking about [how] this last scene with these two characters had to be poetic and poignant and simple and clean. It seemed to boil it down to Hannibal saying, “This is all I ever wanted for you,” and Will acknowledging that it is indeed beautiful that thing Hannibal wanted for him, and realizing in that moment he couldn’t go back so he had to go over the edge.

Is there a story behind the final song during that scene?

Susie Suh is one of my favorite performers. I’ve seen her in concert more often than I’ve seen anybody so to have her write a song for the show is an incredible honor. We found out she was a fan of the show and Brian Reitzell, our composer, asked if she would be interested in it. She essentially said she hasn’t been inspired to write in a long time until she saw Hannibal and was inspired to write again. So it was quite a coup for us to be able to secure that song and include it in the finale. It’s a career highlight — I’m so over the moon that we were able to pull that off.

What kind of homages did you throw to Thomas Harris during the finale episode with some of the dialogue and set ups?

There were a lot of things from the book that were prose, really, and not meant to be dialogue. We put it in actors’ mouths because it was so beautifully written and we wanted the DNA of Thomas Harris to be present in all of the episodes. There’s an interesting sequence in the last two where Jack Crawford and Hannibal Lecter say to Will the same line about playing games the darker the moon. It’s a reflection of their being both the devil and the angel on Will Graham’s shoulders and the fluidity of those roles. The text and the fetishization of the text was really all about the want to honor Thomas Harris in this adaptation.

Are there any characters you feel at this point are incomplete?

Alana Bloom is the one character who arguably has a happy ending. She gets to fly off into the sunset with her billionaire wife and live happily ever after presumably. If there were a season four that would come into question. For now it felt like that character deserved a happy ending and deserved to get away. Where the other characters were varying degrees of dirty, even though Alana got her hands dirty in the Italian chapter, she was an innocent who was corrupted by the circumstances and then somehow found her way back to an innocent life.

Are you still looking to wrap with a movie?

[Executive producer] Martha De Laurentiis is looking into financing for a film. I’m still hoping that we get to tell that story in some way. There is something in the novel Hannibal that has not been done in any of the adaptations and I would love to explore that with Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. I’m hoping that someday, whether it’s a year from now… two years from now… that we will continue to get to tell that story. I feel like if Will Graham did survive that plunge, his most interesting chapter is yet to be told.

Have you given any thought to who you would have wanted to play Clarice Starling in your dream world?
There’s two ways. If you were to go that traditional route, Ellen Page would knock it out of the park. She’s a brilliant actress and has a lot of the qualities that we remember about Jodie Foster’s performance but yet unique in her skill set as an actress. That would be one way to go. But I do think it would be interesting to cast someone who is not white in that role and use race experientially as a defining attribute of the character.

Are there any other venues where this can live on?

There’s a few ways to go. The movie route is very appealing because we have movie actors. It would be great to see them on the big screen and we’ve always shot the show as though it were an independent movie with an independent film esthetic. Coming full circle in return to the big screen is very promising. But it would be interesting to discuss a miniseries or some sort of continuation of the story with another network once all the hubbub of this series has gone fallow. Who knows? Maybe there is an opportunity for us to address things with MGM and Clarice Starling now that the show has completed its run on NBC and there is an opportunity for a rebirth of sorts.

Does the challenge then become telling a complete story for those who haven’t caught up with the series?

Oh no, there’s always a way to come into a story that gives new audiences and old audiences the same entry point with the same satisfaction of witnessing the tale.

Is there anything you’ve learned during this adaptation process that you’re now able to apply to Starz’s American Gods?

Absolutely. [Executive producer] Michael Green and I are very much taking a learned approach to adaptation. One of the things I loved about doing Hannibal was honoring the spirit of the book without necessarily keeping true to the specific plot points as came up for the characters. Sometimes changing a character’s story or swapping stories from the book so it felt new for the show. For instance, in this past season I didn’t want to see Dolarhyde bite the lips off and set fire to a woman. So it felt like a natural substitute to have Chilton set in that flaming wheelchair instead of Freddie Lounds. There are definitely instances in American Gods that we are shifting perspective on. Hopefully they will be as satisfying to American Gods audiences as it was to the Hannibal audience.