20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About Hannibal
1. The Rest Of The Seasons Would Have Followed The Books
NBC had hoped for, and so it was cancelled as of the third season. Bummer. Showrunner Bryan Fuller is optimistic about it getting picked up elsewhere – despite his other commitments – and is generally not making it easy to let go of a probably dead series.
Especially when, mid-way through season two, he gave a rough road-map of where Hannibal was going to go next. And he'd planned for seven seasons. Season four would be Red Dragon, season five would hopefully sort out those Silence Of The Lambs rights issues, and then season six would adapt the Hannibal book.
As it happens, the third season had to merge Hannibal Rising, Hannibal and Red Dragon all at once. Fuller always intended the first few seasons to be like “missing” novels from Harris's series. Speeding things up and not getting Clarice involved meant he could never do his seventh season, which would have dealt with the Hannibal book ending.
...Which has never been properly adapted and involves Agent Starling being hypnotised to fall in love with Lecter, then running off to Europe as criminals in exile. Now that would be an interesting finale.