Good news, Hannibal fans! There’s another TV show in the works based on Thomas Harris’ most famous cannibal, but this one will focus on Clarice Starling—the character Jodie Foster won an Oscar for playing in The Silence Of The Lambs. Unfortunately, there is also some bad news for Hannibal fans: This is completely unrelated to NBC’s horror show and it almost certainly won’t feature the same kind of lovingly crafted murder tableaus that Hannibal was known for.
This story comes from Deadline, which says CBS has made a deal to pick up Clarice, a Silence Of The Lambs sequel series written and executive produced by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet. It doesn’t have a series order yet from the network, but CBS has ordered a pilot and put together a writers room, so it definitely has a lot of faith that the show will get picked up. As for plot specifics, the show will take place in 1993, right after the events of Silence Of The Lambs, with Clarice now “navigating the high-stakes political world of Washington, D.C.” while hunting “serial murders and sexual predators.” (That makes it sound like a very CBS-friendly procedural that happens to be about a famous fictional FBI agent, which is definitely not what Hannibal was, but that’s not this project’s fault.)
If this all sounds familiar, it’s because Lifetime was developing its own Silence Of The Lambs-related TV show in 2012 that was also called Clarice. That one would’ve been a prequel about young Clarice right after she graduates from the FBI academy and before she ever met Hannibal. That project, which was in the works while a very small subset of the TV-viewing world was still swept up in Hannibal-fever, did not go forward.
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Please stop letting Alex Kurtzman write.
On the other hand, if he must be allowed to write, I’m all for him being shuffled off to a CBS procedural instead of a property I actually care about.
Please stop letting Alex Kurtzman write.
Oh, come on. It’s not like he tanked franchises for both Sony and Universal before CBS brought him on board to oversee all of Star Trek and develop new properties for the network and its streaming service or anything.
He’s like a serial rapist of cool things. Now squeal!
Will it be another wizard’s duel between a divine and a profane Epicurean over who controls the province of aesthetics, morality, and sensuality? Then I’m not interested.
Lol. D.C. is overflowing with cannibals, so yes, probably.
Clive Barker wrote some things that might interest you. Stuff like exactly what you described, actually.
I think a story of Clarice Starling being a mentor to a young FBI agent like Jack Crawford seems more logical with current interest in true crime.
But… he is her boss in Silence of the Lambs.
I’m saying she becomes like Crawford and mentors someone else.
Hannibal was a masterful adaptation that didn’t cling too closely to the novels. Instead it thoughtfully examined the source material, delving deep into the characters psychology and painting Will Graham as an unstable narrator.
I don’t think a show about Clarice Starling could possibly work the same way. She’s far more fleshed out in the novels than Will ever was, and her story arc has a distasteful conclusion.The only thing worse would be a show based on Hannibal Rising.
I’m sure it will be vastly different – an entirely different world. Clarice was being pulled by so many different forces (and desires of her own). Setting her story in D.C. is a smart move: I hope the writers take advantage of the heavily political milieu since Clarice’s own nature leans toward the ‘political’. I can easily imagine her even running for some kind of office.
This is completely unrelated to NBC’s horror show […]
As for plot specifics, the show will take place in 199327 years ago.Well, I guess you don’t go to the dinosaur swamp and ask the dinosaurs to capture the zeitgeist of the Danian.
If this all sounds familiar, it’s because Lifetime was developing its own in 2012 that was also called Clarice.
I’m guessing that’s not just an unrelated project. MGM owns the TV rights to the Starling character and has been trying to get an adaptation set up somewhere for years. The studio probably offered Clarice to Kurtzman and Lumet after the earlier deal fell through, rather than it being some passion project or radical new take that the writers pitched to them.
“I’m guessing that’s not just an unrelated project.”
Nobody said it was. Literally nobody.
I mean, except for the original article, which said Lifetime was developing “its own” Silence of the Lambs series that happened to have the same title, and not that Lifetime was the previous network with which MGM tried to place its Clarice concept.(In fact, although the article suggests that the setting of the Lifetime series was somewhat different, taking place before Clarice meets Hannibal while the CBS series takes place after, apparently at some point in its development it was set post-Silence like the CBS version, since Bryan Fuller once mentioned that he tried to horse-trade with the Lifetime producers, getting permission to use the characters of Benjamin Raspail and Jame Gumb in season 1 of Hannibal in exchange for giving Clarice the right to include letters from Hannibal to Clarice.)
Setting it in the 90s seems unnecessaryI would prefer a Hannibal spinoff starring Anna Chlumsky as their Clarice surrogate, poor Miriam
“Setting it in the 90s seems unnecessary”
Unless it takes place two years after the movie that was set in the 90s. Then it makes absolutely perfect sense, doesn’t it?
Would you watch me?I’d wouldn’t watch me.
I’d rather watch a show about moth breeding or working with leather. Just a mundane ho hum show on PBS then have a twist in the last episode.
Ugggghhh. Nobody wants this. Bring back Hannibal
Ill only watch if it involves her eating ray liottas brains
Wasn’t that Crossing Over?Oh, you said eating.
Should we expect product placement from Jergen’s and Longaberger?
TV or AllAccess?
Maybe they’re putting it in the Criminal Minds timeslot, since that’s ending in a few months.
It will be called Cannibal Minds.
Doesn’t matter to me. They all end up on the same torrent sites.
Alex Kurtzman? This series just made the Rolodex of Rude.
So tired of the detective thriller genre, but since it’s never going away I hope they can make something of this. Clarice really is a fascinating character so casting her will be vital. I’m a Tatiana Maslany fan, but apparently she’s signed on for a Perry Mason gig.
Already done, one season only.
Heeey. Maybe, then? Speaking only for myself, but I wouldn’t even feel any Black Orphan character carry-over. She was so many women! And the ‘bonus features’ demonstrate what a pro she is when it comes to the tech-heavy side of acting.
Hey, CBS, I have this show about a lady who hunts serial killers.
LET’S CHANGE HER NAME TO CLARICE STARLING!
Good luck finding a network television lead who can step into a role that didn’t entirely work for Julianne Moore.
You lost me at CBS series…Outside of Person of Interest, and maybe another one or two outliers I can’t remember off-hand, CBS is the worst network for TV shows, when it comes to those looking for something that isn’t rote, repetitive, and has more depth than a puddle. I rarely watch the other two networks either, but they’re a hair less terrible. I already have too many cable, premium channel, and streaming service shows to watch and my backlog ever increases. Bottom of the barrel Silence of the Lambs sequel doesn’t cut it.
It’s not the network; it’s the shows.
Well it’s the network that’s picking up the shows, so…?
Evil is great.
But yeah, it’s the only thing I watch from them, most of their output is crap.
Personally, I cannot smell your cunt.
I won’t really understand the character unless I see her as a child. It would be better if this was Young Clarice and it focused more on the silent lambs part of her childhood, only with her solving crimes using forensic techniques.After all, Darth Vader was an utter mystery until I saw young Anakin. Superman was utterly opaque until Smallville ran for an entire decade. I could never get enough of Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory until I was served a heapin’ helpin’ of his hillbilly childhood. If any writer wants me to truly enjoy a character, I have to see a bildungsroman of its entire life. Child versions of adult characters make everything better.
Make it a musical based off the musical and I’d consider it.
Remember when Sherlock was good and CBS’s Elementary came along being just OK?
So we’ve had Hannibal and now CBS’s Clarice is coming.
Was Sherlock dead and buried when Elementary came out? I mean, you can squat on an idea only so long. If Hannibal’s last episode were a child, it would be a first-grader by the time the first episode of this show arrives.
It may have been a procedural, but Elementary was way, way, way better than Sherlock, and I say that as someone who made everyone watch the first season of Sherlock when it came out. By leaning heavily into Holmes’ addiction and recovery, and having Watson have a complex career path of her own, it transcended the usual CBS crime show with two fantastic lead performances. I love Cumberbatch’s performance on Sherlock (and pretty much everywhere else), but its reliance on cold reading instead of deduction and all of Moffett’s many writing problems made it tiring basically from the second season on.
Fair enough.
I blame Gatiss’s writing more than Moffat’s, and I still enjoyed more of Sherlock than I ever did Elementary. But both were heavily flawed shows and I have about as much faith in Clarice.
Oh yah Clarice is going to suck.
Sherlock was good, but they’re no way it could top this:
Hello ClariceGoodbye Horses.
You just had to remind me of the once-great possibility that Ellen Page was Bryan Fuller’s ideal casting choice for Clarice Starling had Hannibal continued.*infinite screams staring at horrifically beautiful murder tableaux*
This makes me feel the same as I felt when they I heard they were making a new Hellboy film. Angry and Sad.
Hollywood- Hay let’s reboot this thing.
People that love that thing- Well there are these guys and girls that love and understand the source material that didn’t get to finish what they were doing with their adaptations, maybe let them tackle it.
Hollywood- God no fuck you. We want to make a show for people that know fuck all about these characters.
Hollywood’s PA- Claire Danes is almost done with Homeland wouldn’t she be perfect for Clarice.
Hollywood- OMG yes.
Hollywood PA- Or the one from Game Of Thrones.
Hollywood- The Mother of Lizards or the Queen of the Snow?
Hollywood PA- Both would be great you fat arsed mother fucker.
Did you have anything resembling a point to make?
😒 No.
So… Criminal Minds, but based on an existing IP?I’d rather CBS just throw money at Chris Carter to do an Agent Scully stand-alone series, assuming Fox/Disney doesn’t have a lock on the character rights.
“assuming Fox/Disney doesn’t have a lock on the character rights.”
What would make you assume that?
Who could play Clarice? This is CBS so…
Alison Brie?Lauren Cohan?Allison Williams?Rose Leslie?Cairy Lotz?Rachael Taylor?
Caity Lotz is not allowed to leave LoT. I forbid it.
“This is CBS so…”
Angela Lansbury
Marg Helgenberger
Dame Judi Dench
Mark Harmon
I hope they’re a bit more subtle with their promotion of this series than they have been with their show Evil. Nothing like watching the football game this afternoon and having to explain to you kid that no, the guy on TV isn’t actually going to murder the woman’s four daughters and burn down her house.I mean seriously CBS, what the fuck?
“Nothing like watching the football game this afternoon and having to explain to you kid that no, the guy on TV isn’t actually going to murder the woman’s four daughters and burn down her house.”
Maybe if you explain to them once that TV isn’t real, you wouldn’t have to continually tell them that TV isn’t real.
I’m going to assume you don’t have young children, or are never around young children.
Clarice will feel a certain ennui over the fact that none of the subsequent serial killers will ever be quite as sophisticated as Lecter.“A census taker tried to interview me once. I ate his nards with a side of fries and a Budweiser. It was dope!”
And now I am imagining Jason from The Good Place as the world’s most jovial serial killer.
Here’s hoping they keep Brian Fuller away from it.
The whole reason they couldn’t do Silence Of The Lambs on the Hannibal show was because the rights to Clarice/SOTN were elsewhere (the whole thing of Jack Crawford having a student prior to Clarice, who she reminded him of, was a clever workaround I thought).
I straight up don’t accept that anyone anywhere on planet earth thinks this is a better deployment of the rights to that character than her appearance on Hannibal would hav ebeen.
“I straight up don’t accept that anyone anywhere on planet earth thinks this is a better deployment of the rights to that character than her appearance on Hannibal would hav ebeen.”
Maybe they’re simply hoping that people might actually watch this one?
I assume that if its set after the events of Silence then Hannibal will not be involved at all. The characters never meet again until the events of the book Hannibal.
Well, at least she isn’t having champagne sipped off her tits in Rio, I guess.I will die mad about the end of Hannibal (the book. I will die mad about the end of the show, in that it ended at all and is not still on my tv, making me strangely hungry).
The show will take place in 1993, right after the events of Silence Of The Lambs, with Clarice now “navigating the high-stakes political world of Washington, D.C.” while hunting “serial murders and sexual predators.” This sounds boring and too much like every other boring crime drama the networks produce.As a big Hannibal fan, news like this is super frustrating. Especially if it ends up succeeding. IMO Prodigal Son is already a slap in the face as it basically is a inferior/sloppier adaption of Hannibal’s storytelling.
Writers, pre-premiere: “We’re focusing on Clarice Starling, this is her story. I don’t know if we’ll ever see Hannibal Lecter in this show, but if we do it won’t be for several seasons.”
Writers, after 6 lackluster episodes: “We would be remiss not to introduce Hannibal Lecter, he plays too important a role in Clarice’s story to not be involved in this story.Writers, pre-season finale: “We’re very excited to announce we’ve been picked up for Season 2! Also, we will be changing the show’s title to “Lecter”.
Discovery
Picard
Now a Clarice show
There’s a clear pathology to how the cannibal copycat chooses his victims…
Three cases, three shows… we know he’s picking the meat off victims bones, but surely there’s a method to why he keeps doing it to the same body of guy…
oh sweet god! I understand… he’s not just cannibalizing the guy…
HE’S SEWING HIMSELF A BRYAN FULLER SUIT!
I know when I think of a sequel series to Silence of Lambs, CBS the home of milqtoast Jag, NCIS is where I picture it.