Gene Hackman Was Nearly Hannibal Lecter and That’s So Weird

As part of a piece on Slashfilm, the original rights holder of Thomas Harris’ novel, The Silence of the Lambs, had trouble getting the project off the ground. Bob Bookman cited the poor box office of Manhunter as the partial reason for this. At one point, the closest he got to traction was when Gene g-damn Hackman was interested in directing the movie and playing Hannibal himself.

“Nobody wanted it. It was a combination of the serial killer aspect of it and the failure of ‘Manhunter.’ It reminded of how the science fiction genre was as dead as a door nail … until George Lucas made ‘Star Wars.’ Then one day my colleague Fred Specktor asks, are the rights still available? Gene Hackman wants to buy them. Gene called a good friend, Arthur Krim at Orion, and they bought it together, 50/50 partners. Gene wanted to direct, and play Hannibal Lecter.” – Bob Bookman

Hackman’s daughter read the novel and saw the violent content and besought her father to bow out of the project. At that point, Orion bought out Hackman’s interest. Hopkins ended up winning the Oscar and the following year, Hackman won Best Supporting Actor for Unforgiven. So I guess all was well.

I love hearing about the might-have-beens of film history. Like how David Schwimmer was the first choice to play Agent J in Men in Black, or similarly how Will Smith was the first choice for Neo in The Matrix. That is so weird, almost impossible to picture. But them’s the movie business. As good an actor as Hackman was, I think he would have been a terrible choice to play Dr. Lecter. He just doesn’t ever read as psychopathic, nor do I think he’d have directed the movie with nearly as much intensity as Demme did. Sometimes things work out how they should.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.