It became quickly apparent in the week s and months after Hannibal’s NBC demise that its top-tier talent wouldn’t stay unemployed for long, potentially threatening a revival. Creator Bryan Fuller is game for a miniseries when Silence of the Lambs rights revert this year, though star Hugh Dancy thinks it’d take significantly longer to see Hannibal again.

Speaking to TVLine, Dancy reiterated that while he still keeps in contact with Fuller, no concrete plans for any kind of fourth season revival have taken shape. Naturally, Dancy is busy with Hulu’s The Path, while Mikkelsen’s film career continues growing, and Fuller has Starz’s American Gods, leaving Dancy to guess cautiously toward a few years’ time:

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. I think that might actually be kind of interesting … It’s such a strange idea, but it’s potentially very healthy for a story like that. So we’ll see.

Dancy also confirmed that Fuller would be looking at some adaptation of the Silence of the Lambs arc (despite previously suggesting an alternate Season 4 idea), leaving open the question of how Will Graham might participate. Fuller evidently “envisioned taking some elements of that novel and reworking it through the Will-Hannibal relationship… I think it would be more through the filter of Bryan.”

We’ll keep hoping beyond hope, but will Hannibal fans be as passionate for a continuation in four or five years?

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