After a lifetime of writing for the small screen — and 10 years after his cult hit, Hannibal, came to an end — Bryan Fuller finds himself reuniting with his leading man, Mads Mikkelsen, in Dust Bunny. For any Hannibal fan, it’s the kind of reunion that feels long overdue, but Fuller tells Inverse that the series is always with him, even if he never gets another chance to tell Hannibal’s story.
When we meet at the Toronto International Film Festival, fans everywhere are celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Hannibal finale, “The Wrath of the Lamb.” Fuller seems a bit bummed to be missing the celebrations — but the turnout for Dust Bunny in Toronto has been a worthy consolation prize.
“A bunch of fans came up from New York to see both The Last Viking and Dust Bunny,” Fuller says, namedropping the second film that Mikkelsen will appear in at TIFF. “We’re all fans [of Mads], of course.” A decade on, the fandom — or “Fannibals,” as they’re affectionately named — genuinely feels “like a family” for the writer-director. “It’s a really neat thing to be a part of, and I do consider myself part of the fan family, because I’m a fan of Thomas Harris’ work.”
Harris created the character of Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist turned cannibalistic murderer, in 1981. He’s been lauded as one of the greatest villains of all time — and though Anthony Hopkins’ take on Hannibal may be one of the most recognized, Mikkelsen deserves plenty of credit for updating the steely serial murderer for the modern day. Three seasons of Hannibal only scratched the surface of all the potential in Mikkelsen’s portrayal, and the same could be said for the stories that Fuller planned to tell between Hannibal and Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), the criminal profiler with whom Hannibal forges a charged rapport.
“There’s so many stories that... I was really excited about the fourth season,” he tells Inverse. “[But] it was also a challenge to get the third season done. There were a lot of parts starting to rattle in terms of just how we get the show made for the budget that we had, that I was not surprised when it didn’t go to a fourth season.”
Though it’s been 10 years since Hannibal was canceled, the sting of its departure hasn’t lessened for Fuller. “I miss working with the actors and I miss writing those characters,” he continues. “I miss opening up a Thomas Harris book when I’m at a spot where I’m like, ‘What’s this scene about?’ And I just open one of the books randomly and just start reading a passage to sync up with the rhythm of his storytelling and his prose... That was always a really wonderful net to go to, all of those novels.”
Fuller still has ideas for the next chapter of his Hannibal story — his “dream project” is a remake of Silence of the Lambs with Zendaya taking on the role of Clarice Starling — but until that becomes a reality, he does have Mikkelsen on speed dial. He chose the actor as the leading man of his first-ever film to explore the “witty and naughty and charming and boyish” parts of Mikkelsen that Fuller sees in their day-to-day interactions. In Dust Bunny, he plays a hit man hired by a young girl (Sophie Sloan) whose parents were eaten by the monster hiding under her floorboards. It’s part-Léon, part-Monsters Inc. — and every bit the dark fairytale you’d expect from the creator of Pushing Daisies. They may not get another shot at Hannibal, but at least the legacy of the series can live on in a different way.
