Hannibal Lecter TV Show Lands At NBC

Briefly: In September French film studio Gaumont announced the LA opening of Gaumont International Television, a company set up to produce TV shows for the North American market. One of two projects mentioned at the launch of the company was Hannibal, a TV series based on the Hannibal Lecter character created by novelist Thomas Harris in the book Red Dragon, and immortalized on film by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. (Brian Cox had played 'Hannibal Lecktor' in Manhunter, the original film based on Red Dragon, before Hopkins played the role, but it was Hopkins who turned Lector into a screen icon.)Hannibal, the TV show (not to be confused with the Ridley Scott movie of the same name from 2001), is written and exec produced by Bryan Fuller. The hour-long drama has now been set up at NBC, and if the network execs like Fuller's first script the project will skip the pilot stage and go straight to a 13-episode order. We still don't know much about the story; all that has been said is that the series would "center on Lecter's early days, namely his time going head-to-head with FBI agent Will Graham." No casting has been publicly mentioned at this point. [Deadline]