One of the best things about Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal series is how it twists around and reimagines the content of Thomas Harris’ novels to make a faithful but fresh adaptation of its own. Despite some changes, Fullers’ series sticks surprisingly close to the movies sourced from Harris’ novels, often down to reusing individual lines of dialogue straight from the books. With this is mind, there are some differences between the films and TV show.

Chronology

One of the biggest differences between the films and Fuller’s television series is the chronology their events take place in. Though not shot in that order, the films’ story follows Harris’ sequence of writing: Red Dragon (2002), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Hannibal (2001). A prequel novel and movie further looking back on Lecter’s childhood, both titled Hannibal Rising, were also made in 2006 and 2007.

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Fuller's show doesn't cover anything from Hannibal Rising aside from a reference to the villain's sister, Mischa. Instead, it serves as another sort of prequel, exploring the early relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter during their time profiling for the FBI. From there, the back half of the show's second season covers the European arc from Hannibal - the movie and the novel - followed by the events of Red Dragon in the last seven episodes of Season 3. While Fuller originally had intentions to adapt Silence of the Lambs, likely in an ensuing fourth season, he was never able to acquire the rights to the novel before the show's cancellation in 2015.

In addition to this remixed order, the TV show also places a larger focus on Will. Rather than being a straightforward FBI agent with an imagination, the show’s version, played by Hugh Dancy, has a disorder that allows him to feel an extraordinary amount of empathy with other people. While his ability helped him relate to criminals and foresee their plans, it also made him extremely susceptible to Hannibal’s sadistic influence. Where in the films Hannibal takes a one-sided liking to Will and Clarice for their uncorrupted nobleness, Hannibal and Will’s ebbing and flowing relationship in the show is built out of a mutual, primal bloodlust.

Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lecter grabs Hugh Dancy's Will Graham by the neck in Hannibal.

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Red Dragon

Raúl Esparza and Anthony Heald are pretty much identically slimy as Frederick Chilton, down to each flamboyant, little mannerism. However, while Chilton is Hannibal’s jailer in the film, Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) takes up that role in the show as a more fleshed out character, who was previously only mentioned in passing throughout the films and Harris’ novels. Meanwhile, crime journalist Freddie Lounds is gender swapped from an apathetically sleazy Philip Seymour Hoffman to Lara Jean Chorostecki, who is portrayed as more of a discourteous and ambitious opportunist in her recurring role throughout the show.

A major plot thread in Red Dragon involving Lounds also changes from the film to the show. In a failed attempt by Will to provoke Dolarhyde, Lounds gets kidnapped, resulting in the journalist being glued to a wheelchair and burned in a painful, rolling death. In the show, Chilton fills in for Lounds’ and barely survives, albeit heavily disfigured. Interestingly, the show’s Will also sets fire to Freddie Lounds, but a few episodes later, it is revealed that the body wasn’t hers, and it was a ploy by Will and the FBI to lure out Hannibal.

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Another major departure from the film and TV show is Dolarhyde’s attack on Will’s family. Though he learns Will’s home address from Hannibal earlier in the film, Dolarhyde doesn’t invade the Graham home until the last fifteen minutes of Red Dragon. After sneaking into their house and grabbing their son, Dolarhyde is shot to death by Will and his wife.

Richard Armitage as the Red Dragon in Hannibal

The show doesn’t have nearly as clean a resolution. Instead, Dolarhyde immediately breaks into Will’s house while he’s away, though his wife and her son - Will marries into the family, here - manage to escape. Later on, Will draws Dolaryde out by using Hannibal as bait, eventually leading to the three men's apparent deaths at Hannibal's oceanside home.

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Hannibal

As it follows Silence of the Lambs in the films’ continuity, Hannibal the movie centers around Clarice, this time played by Julianne Moore, and her goal to recapture the titular villain. While the show’s third season also follows Hannibal’s murderous trek across Italy, it is Will that pursues him with the help of Jack Crawford and Bloom. Rather than being driven by justice, the show’s characters are out for revenge after Hannibal left the three of them for dead in the Season 2 finale.

Additionally, Hannibal pairs up on his trip with his own former psychiatrist, the mystifying Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson), an entirely new character created during the show’s first season. It’s a similar but less creepy relationship inspired by Hannibal and Clarice’s dynamic in Harris’ novel, where the two become a couple and flee to Buenos Aires at the book’s close. With Will in her stead, the rest of Clarice’s storyline is entirely absent.

Mads Mikkelsen cooking as Hannibal.

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Narratively, the bones of Mason Verger’s storyline are shared between the film and show, with a few distinct alterations. The two versions of the character are played nearly identically and both feature Mason cutting off his face and feeding it to dogs - his own in the film and Will's in the show - at Hannibal’s persuasion, but Mason looks significantly more mutilated in Gary Oldman’s movie incarnation. The show also features a gloriously scored and more graphic take on this particular scene as Hannibal drugs Mason (played by Michael Pitt and Joe Anderson) with a psychedelic drug cocktail.

In the film, Mason’s quest to enact his revenge on Hannibal (and Will, in the show’s case) is aided by corrupt federal agent Paul Krendler, whose brain Lecter later eats. The blood-curdling scene is later paid homage to in the show as Hannibal nearly opens Will's scalp after they meet in Italy.

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Overwhelmed by his employer's distasteful appetites, Mason's assistant, Cordell, who's much more sanguinary in his TV counterpart, eventually pushes him into a pen of man-eating pigs in the film. The show takes a more personal angle by having Alana and Mason’s sister, Margot (entirely absent from the film) fill that role. Once their work is done, the two women kill Mason by dropping him into his pet eel’s tank.

These little differences between the films and the show don’t stack up to anything too significant, though the show does get a notable advantage from having more time to develop its characters and storylines. While getting dozens of more hours to tell and tweak its story is helpful, it's ultimately the immense care and craftsmanship going into the show that makes it so great.

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