Toughened Your Nipples Didn't It

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The last time I wrote about this I was too wussy to title the post this, so I decided to just go for it this time.  What an adventure it's been! Anyway today there is good news for those of us who found the word earlier this week that Bryan Fuller's Munsters reboot called Mockingbird Lane was getting held back by NBC until next year for some fine-tuning to be like one of those monstrously cruel mirages cartoon people see in the desert, turning their wine and grapes into sand - we're thirsty, Bryan! So thirsty. We have waited so long. But we can now turn those grapes and wine back into grapes and wine, and drink and be merry, for good news, very good, is here via EW on Fuller's other project:

"Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal project just got a direct-to-series order. NBC has picked up 13 episodes of the thriller TV series based on Thomas Harris’ classic cannibal serial killer.

Logline: “One-hour contemporary thriller series featuring the classic characters from Thomas Harris’ novel Red Dragon – FBI agent Will Graham and his mentor Dr. Hannibal Lecter – who are re-introduced at the beginning of their budding relationship.”

So that includes some new information. Fuller is focusing on damaged FBI profiler Graham instead of Clarice Starling (popularized by Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs). Graham is the agent who captured Lecter when the psychiatrist was on his killing/eating spree.

The first question is who will play Lecter — a part that one could argue is either a dream role, or a thankless gig considering the inevitable comparisons to Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning take on the character. Another question: How much will NBC push the envelope with the original tale’s gory content?"

I think it's smart to avoid a Clarice Starling character since it changes up the dynamic Lambs dazzled us with, and anyway they've got their hands full already casting an actor to play Hannibal. And while anyone with sense adores Manhunter, I wouldn't say that William Peterson owns the idea of a "Will Graham" quite like Foster and Hopkins do their iconic statue-gobbling roles. (And I can't even remember what Ed Norton did Graham in Red Dragon.) But gah, who will they get for Lecter?!? That is the big question. And with a direct-to-series order, shit's gonna get rolling on this soon. Hooray! Who's ready for a bit of the ol' ultra-violence? Oh wait wrong movie. But still, that.

And it seems silly to me to worry about what NBC will let get by violence-wise - doesn't network television show despicable acts of horrendous nature on stuff like those CSI shows every night of the week? I mean Marg Helgenberger's face alone is worse than any explicitly rendered cannibalism I can even imagine.
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