Whilst NBC’s “Hannibal” was on the air, the series made use of story elements and characters from all the books like “Hannibal,” “Hannibal Rising” and “Red Dragon”. However there was one notable exception – “The Silence of the Lambs”.
Over three seasons the show almost went out of its way to not include specific elements introduced in that book like the characters of Clarice Starling and Jame Gumb. At the time they made it clear it wasn’t a case of trying to avoid stepping on the toes of Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning film adaptation of ‘Silence’. Rather it was a rights issue.
The series was produced by the Dino de Laurentiis Company and Gaumont International Television, whereas MGM retained the rights to ‘Lamb’. Recently showrunner Bryan Fuller did an interview with Collider and went into that, explaining how part of the reason they were never able to get the rights to use Clarice was one of politics, a simple case of the controlling studio holding a grudge for being rejected:
“Silence of the Lambs is owned by MGM. What happened early on and why there was sort of a sticking point for us with the Clarice rights is that MGM was originally working on a deal with Martha De Laurentiis that had everything in one package, and then Gaumont came along and offered Martha a significantly greater deal that MGM couldn’t match.
So there’s been a little bit of animosity between the studios because MGM’s like, ‘Hey, you were gonna do it with us,’ and she was like, ‘Yeah, but you didn’t give me the better deal,’ and they were kind of upset about that. So that’s why it’s been sort of a sticking point to try to get the Clarice rights because they were like, ‘Why would we help you when you…’ They’re basically Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle.”
Of course that was all several years ago with the series now long over. Should it ever be revived though, the problem of not using any material from ‘Silence’ will remain unless a deal can be reached. Said deal is now more unlikely than ever as MGM made a deal with CBS for their upcoming ‘Lambs’ sequel series “Clarice” which sees that character leading an investigative procedural. That will launch mid-season.
