http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/04/19/bryan ... more-83001
'Hannibal' on NBC: How Bryan Fuller will reinvent Dr. Lecter
NBC’s new take on serial killer Hannibal Lecter is shaping up to be quite an interesting (and series-TV-friendly) departure from films like Silence of the Lambs.
Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daises, Heroes) is taking five pages of backstory about the infamous cannibal psychiatrist from Thomas Harris’ book Red Dragon and using it as the basis for the first couple seasons of his planned drama.
Hannibal, which has received a 13-episode series order, features Lecter solving crimes with empathic FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy). For the first time, viewers will spend quality time with Lecter while he’s at large and before the world knows his secrets, working side by side with a similarly brilliant man who is destined to catch him.
“It’s before he was incarcerated, so he’s more of a peacock,” Fuller tells EW.com. “There is a cheery disposition to our Hannibal. He’s not being telegraphed as a villain. If the audience didn’t know who he was, they wouldn’t see him coming. What we have is Alfred Hitchcock’s principle of suspense — show the audience the bomb under the table and let them sweat when it’s going to go boom. So the audience knows who Hannibal is so we don’t have to overplay his villainy. We get to subvert his legacy and give the audience twists and turns.”
So Hannibal almost plays like a crime procedural featuring two very smart investigators — but one of them is a serial killer. It’s also a highly unusual plan in broadcast series TV to start out a drama with one format, while planning from the very beginning to dramatically shake up the story once Hannibal is outed.
“It really is a love story, for lack of a better description, between these two characters,” Fuller says. “As Hannibal has said [to Graham] in a couple of the movies, ‘You’re a lot more like me than you realize.’ We’ll get to the bottom of exactly what that means over the course of the first two seasons. But we’re taking our sweet precious time.”
Hannibal will also be unusual because it’s planned as a 13-episode-per-season show. So though the drama won’t rush Hannibal’s story, it also won’t feel like its padded with throwaway episodes either.
“Doing a cable model on network television gives us the opportunity not to dally in our storytelling because we have a lot of real estate to cover,” Fuller says. “I pitched a seven-season arc including stories from various [Thomas Harris] books.”
The show will include familiar characters from Harris’ novels, though he’s “Starbucking” the genders of a couple of them. FBI boss Jack Crawford will remain male, but Dr. Alan Bloom is becoming Dr. Alana Bloom, and tabloid journalist Freddy Lounds is becoming tabloid blogger Fredricka Lounds.
Between Hannibal and Fuller’s Munsters reboot pilot Mockingbird Lane, the writer certainly has his hands full. Still, there’s one other TV series idea that we’re all hoping eventually gets off the ground — the return of Star Trek.
Fuller has previously spoken to director-producer Bryan Singer about teaming to reboot the TV franchise, though any movement depends on rights-holder Paramount and Trek’s current creative kingpin, J.J. Abrams (who, of course, knows a thing or two about making TV shows too). The consensus has been that there is unlikely to be a Trek TV show while the current movie franchise is still regularly hitting theaters.
“Bryan and I are big fans of Trek and have discussed a take on what we would do, and we would love to do it,” Fuller says. “I don’t think anything is going to happen in any official capacity until after the next movie comes out. And I’m sure it would be wisely under J.J. Abrams’ purview of what happens. He’s the guardian of Trek right now.”
Lobenswert, dass sich Fuller ausführliche Gedanken über die langfristige Entwicklung macht (und somit klar stellt, dass es kein reines Crime-Procedural mit Hannibal als Sidekick wird), aber ich hoffe doch sehr, dass er auch realistischere Pläne in der Schublade hat, die weniger als 7 Staffeln umfassen. In 7 Jahren könnte schon der ganze Sender dicht sein. :lol:
Bei den erwähnten Änderungen stört mich nur, dass aus dem Reporter (in Red Dragon von Philip Seymour Hoffman gespielt) eine Bloggerin wird. Da besteht die Gefahr, dass aus dem schmuddeligen Loser eine klischeehaft hochnäsige Zicke wird.
Im Fall Star Trek würde ich nicht verstehen, wenn man nicht spätestens nach dem zweiten Teil ernsthaft mit der Entwicklung einer neuen Serie anfängt. Die Pause zwischen Teil 1 und 2 war schon viel zu lang.
Wie lange wollen sie warten? Bis die Zuschauerinteresse an den Filmen schwindet und Trek wieder so uncool ist, dass es selbst für SyFY zu sehr Nische ist?
http://www.deadline.com/2012/04/cinemax ... lot-order/
Hurt People, GK-tv’s drama project starring and executive produced by William Petersen, has landed at Cinemax. The HBO sister network has ordered a pilot from the project, which marks Petersen’s return to television after his nine-year starring turn on CSI.
Written by Peter Macmanus, Hurt People centers on Hollis Brown (Petersen), a veteran hitman employed by the crime family that killed his wife. Brown has been enlisted to hunt down his estranged daughter who is intent on destroying those responsible for her mother’s death. Petersen is executive producing the pilot with his producing partner Cynthia Chvatal, Macmanus and GK-tv’s Graham King, Tim Headington and Craig Cegielski. Macmanus’ manager Beth Stine is attached as supervising producer. After they liked the original script by former AMC production executive-turned-writer Macmanus, Petersen and Chvatal teamed with GK-tv to develop it. The project was taken out a month ago, targeting mosty cable networks because of its darker tone.
Petersen is the biggest star so far to join Cinemax’s fast-growing slate of mainstream original programming, adding cache to the network that already has attracted A-list creative auspices like Alan Ball and Frank Spotnitz. Hurt People marks the first pilot order at Cinemax, whose recent originals Strike Back and the upcoming Hunted and Banshee went straight to series. With Petersen on board, Hurt People could also become a strong international seller like Strike Back and the Melissa George-starrer Hunted.
Nachdem Cinemax auf dem besten Weg ist, sich auch außerhalb der Late Night Sparte mit Eigenproduktionen zu etablieren, könnten sie in Zukunft eigentlich auch ein paar Projekte übernehmen, die bei der großen Schwester HBO aus Platzmangel in der Entwicklungsphase gestorben sind.