The recently finished second season of NBC’s “Hannibal” has shaken things up. It was always believed show runner Bryan Fuller had planned to basically do two to three seasons of original story with the fourth and subsequent seasons segueing into “Red Dragon” and the subsequent novels.

However, this second season has shown the producing mastermind hasn’t been afraid to change up the back story and lore of the books as necessary. A key scene from “Red Dragon” has already played out, supporting character fates seem uncertain in the wake of a shock death, and elements from later books (eg. Mason Verger) have already been explored.

There’s also the complication with “The Silence of the Lambs” as legal issues prevent use of elements from that book – namely characters like Clarice Starling, Benjamin Raspbell and Jame Gumb. Speaking with TV Guide about the third season, which is soon slated to head into production, Fuller says expect the show to change up yet again.

In fact, he says the first episode of the third season “will essentially function as a new pilot for a new series because everything’s different… it is such a departure structurally from what we’ve been doing in the first two seasons, I want to make sure we’ve thought it through very well”. He goes on to say:

“Season Three is going to be a lot of fun, because it’s going to be taking a lot of disparate elements from the novel ‘Hannibal Rising’ and the novel ‘Hannibal’ and mashing them up together as part of the thrust of the season. It’s going to be fun to bastardize two novels into one sort of Frankenstein season. My hope, is that not only do we have a completely different Hannibal Lecter story in season three, but we will meet some of those great characters like Francis Dolarhyde and Lady Murasaki and weave them into the world in a unique way.”

For the full interview, which delves heavily into last week’s very bloody finale, click here