David Tennant broke bad with Marvel’s Jessica Jones, but the former Doctor Who star nearly played an even more delicious villain. According to Tennant, he and Bryan Fuller discussed the titular role of Hannibal before Mads Mikkelsen signed on.
Both American Gods and the general ubiquity of Mads Mikkelsen have satiated our Hannibal hunger over the last year, but is a revival any closer? Maybe so, as creator Bryan Fuller reveals some very early “conversations” have begun, even if they don’t lead anywhere just yet.
Mads Mikkelsen, like Jack Nicholson and Vincent Price before him, is one of those villain actors. He’s played the baddie so many times and so well, that it’s weird now to see him in a role like he had in Rogue One, where he’s not eating people’s limbs in front of them or trying to kill James Bond. Which is why it’s great to see him back in his nefarious little comfort zone as the antagonist in Doug Liman’s upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller Chaos Walking.
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.