#Mads Mikkelsen Wants Hannibal Season 4 to Introduce Buffalo Bill If It Happens

If Hannibal ever gets a fourth season, series star Mads Mikkelsen is hoping the show will introduce Buffalo Bill. Originally played by Ted Levine in Silence of the Lambs, Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb serves as the main antagonist. Also featured in the original 1988 novel, the character is a sadistic serial killer who skins his murder victims to make suits with their flesh. In one particularly memorable scene from the movie, Buffalo Bill dances nude in the mirror while the Q Lazzarus song “Goodbye Horses” plays in the background.

Needless to say, Buffalo Bill is quite a character, and Mikkelsen would love to see how the serial killer would fit into the Hannibal universe. In a recent interview with IndieWire, the actor reiterated series creator Bryan Fuller’s desire to include content from Silence of the Lambs into a potential season 4. Mikkelsen also specifically mentions Buffalo Bill as someone he wants to see adapted, even if he’ll be reimagined for the series.
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“I don’t think it’s a secret that if it does happen, we would love to go into Silence of the Lambs. That’s always been an issue because they didn’t have the rights for that book. But that’s obviously the most famous part and we’d love to go in there. We’d obviously switch it around a little and do all kinds of crazy stuff with it. That story is so interesting and the characters in it are as interesting. We’d switch around the genders and maybe even put two characters into one. We would love to find someone to play Buffalo Bill. That’s going to be tough. We found a Hannibal, so it’s possible.”

Mads Mikkelsen praises Levine as a “fantastic actor” based on his performance in Silence of the Lambs, and he also has someone else in mind for who could play Buffalo Bill in Hannibal. He named Boardwalk Empire star Michael Pitt as someone he’d “love to see” as Buffalo Bill. The only problem is that Pitt has already been featured in Hannibal as Mason Verger before the role was recast with Joe Anderson in the third season.

If another season of Hannibal goes into production anytime soon, Mikkelsen probably won’t get his wish. At this time, MGM still isn’t allowing for Fuller and the Hannibal team to use the characters featured in Silence of the Lambs. This is due to the studio working on the upcoming series Clarice, which will star Rebecca Breeds as Clarice Starling. In the works at CBS, a premiere date hasn’t yet been set for the show.

A critically-acclaimed hit, Hannibal is a show many fans feel ended way too soon when Fox pulled the plug in 2015. In the years since, Fuller has been very open about his continuous desire to one day make some new episodes of the series. If Clarice happens to flop when it arrives on CBS, perhaps MGM will finally be more open to letting team Hannibal use Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill in a new season of Hannibal. This news comes to us from IndieWire.

Topics: Hannibal, Silence of the Lambs