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Ridley Scott originally turned down producer Dino De Laurentiis’s offer to direct HANNIBAL.

It was, however, just a misunderstanding. When De Laurentiis met with  Scott during production of his ancient Rome epic GLADIATOR (2000), Scott thought De Laurentiis meant the Carthaginian warrior who nearly conquered the Roman Empire in the 200s B.C. So Scott laughed, “Dino, I’m doing a Roman epic right now. I don’t wanna do elephants coming over the Alps next, old boy.”

When Dino explained, “No — Hannibal LECTER,” they made a deal. The 2001 psychological horror crime thriller Scott directed was the sequel to 1991’s THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, which did $272.7M worldwide and won five Oscars — best picture, directing (Jonathan Demme), lead actress (Jodie Foster), lead actor (Anthony Hopkins) & adapted screenplay (Ted Tally based on Thomas Harris’ book).

De Laurentiis and his producer wife, Martha, held the movie rights to the character Dr. Lecter. After producing the first Lecter film, MANHUNTER (1986), they let Orion Pictures make LAMBS without them being involved or receiving fees. But after LAMBS’ success, they wanted a new Lecter book to adapt. Harris spent years writing a sequel novel and let De Laurentiis know as soon as it was available. The purchase price was a hefty $10M, but it paid off for Dino.
HANNIBAL, which opened Feb. 9, 2001 from MGM, conquered the boxoffice with $351.8M worldwide on a budget of $87M.

Foster & Demme had intended to do the sequel, but they and Tally, as well, declined because they felt it was excessively violent and lurid. The budget buzz at the time had HANNIBAL’s production cost at about $100M with Foster & Hopkins each getting $15M and Demme up to $19M.

Foster later went on the record, saying she’d been “offered more money than ever in my entire career to make this film — but who cares if it betrays Clarice, who has become like a person to me, in the end.”

When Scott asked Hopkins who should replace Foster, he suggested Julianne Moore, with whom he’d worked on the 1996 romantic bio-drama SURVIVING PICASSO, directed by James Ivory.

The laundry list of other actresses considered for Clarice included Gillian Anderson, Jennifer Aniston, Cate Blanchett, Helen Hunt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Jessica Parker & Winona Ryder.

After Tally’s exit, De Laurentiis asked Steven Zaillian (SCHINDLER’S LIST), to adapt Harris’ novel. Zaillian passed because he was very busy then and felt, “you can almost never win when you do a sequel.” De Laurentiis, of course, kept twisting his arm until he finally said yes. Zaillian put it perfectly when he explained, “It’s hard to say no to Dino once and it’s almost impossible to say no to him twice.”