Coming on March 18th is A&E's newest show, BATES MOTEL. Soon after, we will see another show based on a famous film serial killer. HANNIBAL is scheduled to premiere on April 4th, 2013, on NBC. The plot synopsis for the show is it will show Hannibal Lecter's relationship with Will Graham, when Lecter is a forensic psychiatrist. Now, the fact that this takes place before Lecter is caught leaves me wondering; is this a prequel? Or will it take the BATES MOTEL route, and just completely reboot the series? Now, the PSYCHO franchise was basically dead and there were so many bad sequels and remakes that there was nothing left to do but reboot it. But the Hannibal Lecter franchise was not in a place where I feel it should be rebooted. If this is in continuity, will it have references to HANNIBAL RISING? As of right now, I am going to assume the show is a reboot. With that, here are some things I think it should have.
HANNIBAL'S SECRET LIFE: It would be extremely interesting to see Hannibal have a secret life as a canniballistic serial killer. Especially if they show the growing friendship between Will Graham and Lecter. That way, by the end of, say, the 2nd season, when it is established that they are good friends, Graham could discover Lecter's secret life, and that could lead into an interesting story arc for the next season where Graham has to track down his good friend.
CLASSIC CHARACTERS: The series should referance characters from the series, such as Buffalo Bill, Clarice Starling, and Chilton. This could also work in setting up future story arcs (more on that later). It would just be a cool shout-out to fans of the series.
RATING: While the rating for this will probably be TV-14, it would be cool if NBC put it on at a later time and had it be TV-MA. That way they could have more adult themes and have some great, gory, classic Hannibal moments. While I love it when a horror movie leaves stuff to your imagination, when you're dealing with a character like Lecter, you do need some gore, just like the films.
THE BOOK SERIES: If this a reboot, I think it could be cool for them to re-adapt the books into season long story arcs. While it would difficult to adapt HANNIBAL RISING, being that you would have a whole new cast, it would be very cool to see RED DRAGON, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and HANNIBAL adapted into story-arcs for later seasons.
What do you guys think of HANNIBAL? Are you more excited for HANNIBAL, or BATES MOTEL? Leave a comment below, and let me know!
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