If the actors are doing their jobs, very few members of the audience will know where they came from, or care. Most people don't follow entertainment industry news.
^ Oh, I know. But I remember talk that, for example, WB were very worried that Batman Begins had so many British and Irish actors in its cast - Bale, Caine, Neeson, Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Linus Roache etc. Word was that they insisted on Katie Holmes as they wanted an all-American girl as the leading lady.
Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon were mostly about psychological games and profiling. There's very little onscreen violence. Hell, in Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins is on screen for less than 17 minutes. CSI etc. have already set some pretty high limits on what you can get away with on TV.
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/tvnews.php?id=88629 NBC have landed director David Slade, of Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night fame to direct the pilot episode. This is shaping up quite nicely, it must be said.
30 Days of Night was a pretty decent vampire/horror movie outing, but it pales in comparison to the level of awesome that was Hard Candy.
It's interesting how much this show sounds like Dexter when you bring it down to it's most simple plot points: A serial killer helps police solve murders while we wait for those same cops to eventually learn his dark secrets.
That's the problem, I'm not going to be able to help but compare it with Dexter, and Michael J. Hall is a fiendishly tough act to follow. Also, FOX and the CW both have serial killer shows in the works (likely to get picked up) and I don't think we need serial killers on every network except ABC. I find this a lot more interesting: Is that a promise?
Here's a curious turn-up for the books. While NBC preps this show, Lifetime is said to be developing a series based around the young Clarice Starling and her adventures fresh out of the academy. Of course, it may well go nowhere but if both shows do air, it will be interesting to compare them. http://www.comingsoon.net/news/tvnews.php?id=90730
You are so fast! I only just saw that. Dude looks creepy, so there's that. But I dunno about all these serial killer shows. I don't get the sense that there's a lot of appetite for an ongoing serial killer TV show among the broadcast audience. A movie, sure, but that's just two hours. How do you maintain this topic before it gets, well, boring? My hunch is that Hannibal and The Following are going to premiere strong and then fall off fast. The one that might hit is Cult - which may or may not even be a serial killer show, but certainly has that feel. Mainly I think that one is well suited to the CW's audience, while having the potential to expand it like the CW wants, into a male direction. I think this may be another example of Hollywood deciding that X is the big trend, while guess what, the trend is really Y (Hatfields & McCoys, anyone?) Being able to turn around on a dime about as well as an aircraft carrier in a sea of mollasses, they'll fall all over themselves making Westerns, by which time, the trend is Z. Hee hee.
Are they going to try keep this series within the continuity of the movies or are they doing their own thing?
Mikkelsen is an interesting choice, though I'd rather that they'd gone for someone who didn't so obviously scream 'VILLAIN!' as he does. I prefer the Brian Cox take on the character to the Anthony Hopkins one. In coincidence corner, Mikkelson will be appearing opposite Hopkins in Thor 2, assuming that this tv show doesn't take him out of the movie.
There's an interesting little bit of near-symmetry here. Fishburne was last on tv when he replaced William Petersen in CSI and Petersen had previously played Will Graham in Manhunter, the first Lecter movie, based on Red Dragon.