Hannibal Lecter is a cultural icon. Possibly the most famous anti-hero ever created. Brilliant, charming and evil, he grips the popular imagination like no other villain. His creator, the reclusive American writer Thomas Harris, introduced him to the world as a minor, though significant, character in the menacing novel Red Dragon published in 1981. Harris is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s most skillful writers of psychological thrillers. His complex, brilliantly written stories are remarkable; not just for their spine-chilling horror, but also for the way they create empathy for the cunning, ruthless serial killer. Red Dragon quickly became a best seller. Producers Dino and Martha De Laurentiis spotted the potential in the story and were the first to bring Hannibal to the screen in the 1986 Michael Mann thriller MANHUNTER.

MANHUNTER was a cult success, but it was the 1991 movie SILENCE OF THE LAMBS which brought Hannibal into the mainstream. Directed by Jonathan Demme, the taut, terrifying narrative collected five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins and Best Actress for Jodie Foster. Following SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, Dino and Martha De Laurentiis returned to the Hannibal franchise when they produced the massive box office hits HANNIBAL in 2001 and the remake RED DRAGON in 2002, with Anthony Hopkins starring in both.

It was fitting, therefore, that they were the drivers behind the new story. “We were inspired by a passage in the novel Hannibal,” Martha explains. “We found a two page sequence about Mischa, Hannibal’s younger sister, which hinted at reasons for Hannibal’s violence and suggested the opening of the story.”

The couple knew they had to get Thomas Harris on board and approached him with the idea. Although initially hesitant about re-entering the universe of his most famous creation, the writer found himself so absorbed by the idea that he wanted to write the screenplay as well as the novel. “How could we refuse?” says Martha.

Once they had a short treatment of the story, director Peter Webber was brought onto the project. “Peter was on our wish list from the beginning,” Martha says. “We wanted to go with a young, hungry director for this project. GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING showed that he could tell a story visually and we could see from some of his TV work in the UK, that he had the right edginess.”

Webber was looking for his next project after his extraordinary feature debut, the hugely acclaimed, award winning, GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. He was thrilled by the idea of tackling the Hannibal legacy. “After the film, I was inundated with lots of scripts where no one really says anything, where people stare at each other across rooms, and lots of films about dead painters - Leonardo, Caravaggio - you name it and they’ve all landed on my doorstep! I realised that was really not what I wanted to do; I was very proud of that film, but I don’t want to make carbon copies of it forever and ever. It was really a film about love and this is a film about hate. I thought this was really a great opportunity to keep myself fresh and interested, doing stuff I’d never done before.”

“This story is about the birth of a monster, the creation of the character, so Hannibal is at the centre of it, whereas in the previous films, he’s always been tangential,” continues Webber. “In SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, he has something like 18 minutes of screen time. In this film he is on screen 90% of the time. What’s more, in the previous films, he arrives on screen as a monster. For me, what’s interesting is seeing how this character came to be who he is.”

Thomas Harris is renowned for his detailed research and can take up to ten years to develop one of his blockbuster novels. Webber found the writer’s knowledge was a huge support as the film progressed. “He’s got such an amazing, detailed imagination. He is able to tell you what colour the curtains are in a certain scene, what the furnishings were, all these details - he just has an encyclopaedic mind. The other thing that’s fascinating about Harris is that he used to be a crime journalist, so each of the rather grisly murders in this film are all based on specific crime scenes that he attended.”

The two men developed a close creative relationship, with Webber visiting Harris in Miami to work on the script. “It’s actually hard to get him out of the house; he is a private man. So it was a privilege to be admitted into his home,” says Webber. Their exchange of ideas continued throughout the production: “We were in constant communication on the phone. Every evening when I got back, I wrote him emails as I prepared for the next day. I have a problem with this line, I want to change this or that.”

Martha De Laurentiis confirms the immense value of the writer’s close involvement: “Thomas was always accessible and we always kept him updated on what we were doing. He certainly did so much more than a screenwriter or an author normally does. It wouldn’t be HANNIBAL RISING without Thomas Harris’ constant input.”

There was still a real challenge in conveying the complexity of the storytelling in just 16 weeks of shooting. “Every thing that Hannibal does needs screen time to create impact,” Martha explains, “You can’t shoot tension and all of the delicious details of the character quickly, you can’t do it in two shots, you need time to establish it, get closer and enjoy it, setting all that up, so it honors the screenwriter and the screenplay.”

One of the issues they had to deal with was how to manage the audience’s engagement with the savage serial killer. Webber says: “Can you be sympathetic towards a psychopathic murderer? I’m interested in building something that is psychologically complex, where you are taken on a journey and have feelings for someone. I would say that in our film maybe you don’t have as much sympathy for Hannibal at the end as you do at the beginning, but you do understand why he ends up the way he does. Maybe that’s what’s true about all tragedies – it’s about that fatal flaw in a character, the one thing that brings a great person to their knees.”

For Webber, HANNIBAL RISING was the most ambitious project he’d undertaken: “The scale of this one is very different. We’ve got big battle scenes, a number of murders. The budget is considerably bigger than my last film and so there’s a much greater sense of responsibility.” However, he was undaunted by the challenge. “The tone of the story is different but you are using the same tools; you just use them in a different way.”

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THE CAST OF HANNIBAL RISING
Casting the central role of young Hannibal was critical to the film. Producer Dino De Laurentiis describes how they searched for a long time to find the right person: “We couldn’t find a face with the right kind of mystery. We needed a young guy who looked like he could kill, but also someone who could be charming.”