Hannibal Lecter

On the data. There are three unconnected screen continuities here and a set of novels underneath all of them. The novels come first: Red Dragon in 1981, The Silence of the Lambs in 1988, Hannibal in 1999 and Hannibal Rising in 2006. Red Dragon has been filmed twice. Michael Mann's Manhunter in 1986 was the first, with Brian Cox as a supporting character whose surname is spelled Lecktor on screen, and it rewrites the novel's ending into a short violent raid rather than the book's drawn out climax. It flopped, and when The Silence of the Lambs was made five years later at a different studio with Anthony Hopkins, nothing from Manhunter carried over. So the 2002 Red Dragon is not a remake in the ordinary sense, it is the same novel filmed a second time in order to give the Hopkins films a beginning, and it adds an opening scene showing Lecter's capture that appears in no novel. Manhunter and Red Dragon are therefore the same story in two continuities, and watching both back to back is a strange experience rather than a useful one. In story order the Hopkins strand runs Hannibal Rising, then Red Dragon, then The Silence of the Lambs, then Hannibal, and in release order it runs Silence, Hannibal, Red Dragon, Hannibal Rising, which is close to exactly backwards. This site puts Silence first for a newcomer anyway, because story order here means starting with the weakest film in the set. Where the films diverge from the books matters most in Hannibal: the 1999 novel ends with Starling leaving willingly with Lecter, and the 2001 film throws that ending away and replaces it, which is the single largest change in the whole franchise and the reason Jodie Foster did not return. The Silence of the Lambs film is close to its novel. Hannibal Rising is the odd one, because Dino De Laurentiis commissioned the film first and Harris wrote the novel and the screenplay together, so the book is not really a source. Bryan Fuller's NBC series, three seasons of thirteen episodes each and thirty-nine in total, is a third continuity. It dramatises the years before Red Dragon that no novel covers, then adapts Hannibal in the first half of season 3 and Red Dragon across the last six episodes, which is why it cannot be slotted into either film strand. It was cancelled in 2015; a fourth season has been discussed for a decade without being ordered, and the rights have been fragmenting rather than consolidating, so nothing is listed for it. Clarice, one season of thirteen episodes in 2021, is set a year after The Silence of the Lambs and was made under a rights split that let it use Starling and Buffalo Bill but not Lecter, who is never named. It reads as a fourth branch rather than a continuation, and it was not renewed. Note also that the two Starling actors differ across the films, Foster in 1991 and Julianne Moore in 2001, and the two Jack Crawfords differ across nearly every version, which is a good reminder that continuity here is a matter of rights deals rather than planning.

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