Fuller chews over Hannibal

Bryan Fuller, writer and showrunner of Hannibal, tells Talking Shop about bringing Thomas Harris’s infamous character to the small screen on NBC and offers his thoughts on how Netflix is shaking up the business ahead of the LA Screenings.

Fuller, who cut his teeth 15 years ago on Star Trek series Voyager and Deep Space Nine, has now penned a drama based on Harris’s classic novel Red Dragon.

The show sees Danish actor Mads Mikkelson bring the Dr Hannibal Lecter character to life afresh alongside Hugh Dancy as Will Graham, the young FBI criminal profiler that comes to work with him.

“That relationship is one that felt it could be explored in a way that taps into the literature that hasn’t seen its way to any of the films,” says Fuller.

It’s an edgy series, coming out on NBC around the same time as another Gaumont International TV horror show, Hemlock Grove, on Netlix. Was Fuller surprised a broadcast network went with it? He says ‘no.’

“I felt like it was a great opportunity to embrace a genre that had been relatively unexplored on network television but had been proven successful on cable and also on other platforms like Netflix. It felt like it was a smart progressive move on behalf of the network.”

But he says Netflix, rumoured to be heading to the LA Screenings for the first time next month, is definitely shaking things up.

“They’re making a huge difference in terms of content because they’re bypassing the controlled rolling out of a series where you have to wait a week to see your programme,” says Fuller. “Hannibal would work sitting down and watching it in one sitting and reading it like a book because it really is one story that’s broken up into 13 chapters.”

Sky Living has picked up UK rights and will begin airing the series on May 7.