Someday, someway, there may be a fourth season of the television series Hannibal, which was created by Bryan Fuller and inspired by characters in novels by Thomas Harris. NBC cancelled Hannibal after its third season five years ago, but Fuller and stars Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy are still holding on to hope that they'll be able to return to that world at some point down the line.
If/when Hannibal season 4 does happen, it probably won't have anything to do with the story of Harris's novel The Silence of the Lambs, and if it does it's not likely to feature Michael Pitt as Buffalo Bill, since Pitt already played the character Mason Verger in season 2 of Hannibal… but that doesn't stop Mikkelsen from wishing that was all possible.
Speaking with IndieWire, Mikkelsen – who played the title character on Hannibal – had this to say:
I don't think it's a secret that if (season 4) does happen, we would love to go into Silence of the Lambs. That's always been an issue because they didn't have the rights for that book. But that's obviously the most famous part and we'd love to go in there. We'd obviously switch it around a little and do all kinds of crazy stuff with it. That story is so interesting and the characters in it are as interesting. We'd switch around the genders and maybe even put two characters into one. We would love to find someone to play Buffalo Bill. That's going to be tough. We found a Hannibal, so it's possible. … We already used Michael Pitt for Mason and that was fantastic. If he wasn't playing Mason I'd love to see him as Buffalo Bill."
CBS is now assembling a TV series called Clarice, which follows The Silence of the Lambs character Clarice Starling after the events of the novel. That show has no connection to Fuller's Hannibal.
Martha & I tried many times to work with MGM to include Clarice into our Hannibal story. They ultimately told us they had their own plans for Clarice and they didn't need Hannibal to tell her story. Don’t think this impacts a potential #HANNIBAL S4 as we never had Clarice rights.
— Bryan Fuller (@BryanFuller) January 12, 2020
