After Hannibal was cancelled by NBC, many thought Amazon was the most viable candidate to save the series – especially because the service already had exclusive streaming rights to the show’s first three seasons in the US (which, Hannibal executive producer Bryan Fuller noted, effectively removed Netflix’s interest , since they wouldn't have all the seasons) and are expanding their own original series output.

Loading

However, ultimately, a deal with Amazon was not made , and Hannibal’s future remains up in the air, as the cast’s contracts have been let go and it seems like any continuation wouldn’t happen anytime soon.Today at the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour, Amazon executives were on hand to discuss their upcoming slate of series and I asked if they could say what happened with Hannibal.Said Roy Price, the head of Amazon Studios, “We occasionally look at shows that could be revived. Often it’s complicated from a business point of view.”Amazon has notably not saved any cancelled series yet, unlike Netflix, Hulu or Yahoo, and Amazon Head of Comedy Joe Lewis remarked, “It’s also important… You want your originals to define your network, and that’s something we think about. It doesn’t mean we would never do it, but we are pretty focused on developing content that says ‘Amazon Studios,’ that speaks to what we want to hand to customers. Maybe someday we will do something different, but right now, that hasn’t come up yet.”Price then spoke more about their general interest in developing new series versus picking up series from other networks, stating, “The thing about extending a show is that you would always be doing -- this is not a reflection on Hannibal in particular -- but you would always be doing that or you would usually be doing that, let’s say, instead of doing the first season of a new show. And the first season of a new show could become the fantastic new signature show for the network, whereas a show that you could pick up that is coming out from a network or something, usually, if you have the opportunity to pick it up, it’s kind of a marginally solid show. Almost never, truly is it a signature… a fantastic show that is going to be a signature show. And so it’s often hard to decide, ‘Yeah, let’s not try a new show. Let’s bet on getting a solid outcome.’ We are not really in the solid outcome business, you know. We are not really in the programming business, you know. There used to be a market and there isn’t in On Demand for that show”Price then noted again that his statements were “No reflection on Hannibal. We are not talking about Hannibal anymore, but, you know, that show that would kind of get you from 8:30 to 9:00 [on a network], you know, a solid goodish show… In an On Demand world, that show doesn’t have value because people aren’t going to demand it. It’s not going to be their favorite show. It’s not going to be a significant show for them, and so you really have to try to be in the new, interesting, passionate performance, ‘That’s the best thing I’ve ever written’ business. And you are not always going to get that, but that’s always what you have to strive for. And if you fail, when you fail, you have to fail trying to do that. Don’t fail trying to be ‘solid’, because that’s a super bummer because you are you set your sights low and then you missed.”I followed up attempting to get a bit more specific on Hannibal, as there was a report from Deadline that said that what finally stopped a deal from happening was Bryan Fuller’s commitment to adapting Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for Starz, which would have held back production on Hannibal: Season 4.Said Morgan Wandell, Amazon’s Head of Drama, “That’s true. That was a factor. He had another Starz show that was going, and it was going to be a year until, hopefully, he was ready to even start production again. And that was a factor.”