Clarice: 'Silence of the Lambs' sequel series

[:eek:]

‘Clarice’: Elizabeth Klaviter Named Showrunner For New CBS Series – Deadline

 

[Pennywise]

Jenny Lumet Is On A Roll - The Independent - The most comprehensive news in the Hamptons, Shelter Island & the North Fork

The idea for “Clarice” occurred to the partners over a year ago, and had been a long time in the making. As is the nature of the business, there was much uncertainty about when, if, and how the project might come to light, so Lumet put her efforts into other projects. Then, “Clarice” landed.

The series, born from a love of the movie “The Silence of the Lambs” and the source novel behind it, follows FBI agent Clarice Starling a year after the traumatizing events of the book and film. Writing a series which is, at its core, a sort of fan fiction based on such a well-known and well-loved character has been both daunting and exhilarating for Lumet.

“What’s wonderful about Clarice is that even though she makes this huge, extraordinary impact, there’s a lot about her that, certainly in the movie, wasn’t put out there. She sort of just jumps on a moving train. It’s very encapsulated in time,” said Lumet. She found herself asking, “Why is everybody else getting to talk, and not the woman who actually won? Who saved everybody?”

There’s more in the book about the heroine’s roots, but many questions have remained hitherto unanswered. The “fun part” for Lumet has been assembling the puzzle through a combination of what the book reveals, and creatively filling in the gaps.

“There are a lot of questions about her family, like ‘What happened after her dad died?’” asked Lumet, referencing the chilling scene from which the source draws its title. “You know, she had a whole life,” she continued enthusiastically, “and that’s something that’s worth exploring. So, that part wasn’t intimidating; the big challenge of it is internal. I think people will bring whatever they’re going to bring to this show, and I welcome it. I just hope to do right by it. I love this character deeply.”

 

[Pennywise]

 

[Pennywise]

Clarice EP: CBS' Silence of the Lambs Sequel Will NOT Be a Procedural

Clarice Starling will not be reduced to being a run-of-the-mill weekly crimesolver when CBS’ Silence of the Lambsfollow-up series arrives at midseason.

Greenlit in May and now five weeks into production, Claricestars Aussie actress Rebecca Breeds (The Originals, Pretty Little Liars) in the role played on film by Jodie Foster, and promises “a deep dive into the untold personal story of FBI Agent Clarice Starling as she returns to the field in 1993,” six months after the events of The Silence of the Lambs. Both “brilliant and vulnerable,” Clarice has a “complex psychological makeup that comes from a challenging childhood empowers her to begin to find her voice while working in a man’s world, as well as escape the family secrets that have haunted her throughout her life,” the official logline reminds us.

“Hannibal [Lecter] is an incredible character, as is [FBI agent] Will Graham,” Clarice executive producer Alex Kurtzman noted in the latest THR’s Top 5 podcast, “but Clarice Starling has a truly unique amazing psychology, and part of why Silence of the Lambs was so wonderful is the film put you so squarely in her shoes.”

Acknowledging the “responsibilities and expectations” that come with continuing such a hero’s story, Kurtzman said, “I’ll tell what we didn’t want [the TV series] to be. We didn’t want it to be Clarice Starling: The Procedural. We just weren’t go to make that show…. And MGM, who was gracious enough to trust us with the rights to Clarice, had no interest in making that show.”

As such, Kurtzman envisioned Clarice as a streaming series, but CBS CCO David Nevins lobbied for it to air on CBS proper. “I said, ‘I don’t see that. I’m not go to reduce it to a procedural,'” Kurtzman recalled. “[David] said, ‘You can do whatever show you want.’ I said, ‘It’s going to be serialized,’ he said, ‘Do it on the network.’ I said, ‘Are you sure?’ and he said yes.”

And to date, CBS has stayed true to its word. “Everybody, top down at the network, has not given us one note to make it more procedural since we started,” Kurtzman avowed. “It’s actually been kind of amazing.”

Kurtzman allowed that while there is inherently a procedural element to the titular FBI agent’s investigations, Clarice very much leads with “a sense of emotional psychology. The title of the pilot is ‘The Silence Is Over,’ and that’s actually what we want the outline for the show to be. It’s ‘Clarice Starling is finally speaking,’ and she’s exploring lots of new things about herself after the trauma of Buffalo Bill.”

And considering the rich backstory the character was given in the Thomas Harris novels, “There’s so much to dig into there,” Kurtzman noted.

 

[TheWiseGuy487]

Clarice EP: CBS' Silence of the Lambs Sequel Will NOT Be a Procedural

The fact that it won’t be a procedural and that, having seen the original film, they’re saying all the right things about who Clarice is as a character makes me more excited for this.

 

[Primal Slayer]

Im surprised CBS was so adamant this air on the network instead All Access

 

[Mysteryman]

The family secrets that have haunted her all her life? What does that refer to?

 

[TheWiseGuy487]

The family secrets that have haunted her all her life? What does that refer to?

Probably elaborating and expanding her background on the story Clarice tells Hannibal in this scene:



Only a short bit in the film, but it scratches the surface of so many potentially interesting backstories you could tell with her character and how her upbringing shaped and molded her into the person she is.

 

[Pennywise]

‘Clarice’: Marnee Carpenter Joins CBS’ ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ Sequel – Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: Marnee Carpenter (Criminal Minds, Good Girls) is set as a series regular opposite Rebecca Breeds in CBS’ Silence of the Lambs sequel series Clarice,from Jenny Lumet, Alex Kurtzman, MGM Television and CBS Studios. Additionally, Jayne Atkinson (Criminal Minds, House of Cards), Shawn Doyle(The Comey Rule, The Expanse), and Tim Guinee (Homeland, Elementary) have been cast in recurring/guest roles in the midseason crime drama series based on Thomas Harris’ famous character.

Written/executive produced by Lumet and Kurtzman, Clarice is set in 1993, one year after the events of The Silence of the Lambs. It tells the personal story of FBI Agent Clarice Starling (Breeds) as she returns to the field to pursue serial murderers and sexual predators while navigating the high-stakes political world of Washington, D.C.

Carpenter plays Catherine Martin, who was saved from Buffalo Bill’s basement by Clarice.

Atkinson portrays Ruth Martin, the newly appointed attorney general and Catherine’s mother. Doyle plays Clarice’s therapist at Quantico, and Guinee plays Novak, the leader of a secessionist militia group.

 

[Pennywise]

 

[Pennywise]

 

[Sawyer]

Like what I’m seeing. Guess I’ll start watching CBS for the first time since I gave up on Big Brother.

 

[Fincher]

There's not enough to go on yet, but the teaser was fine.

 

[Pennywise]

 

[SwordOfMorning]

Alex Kurtzman is like a needy, boring Nice Guy who waits in the wings to swoop in like a hawk and mack on Bryan Fuller's abandoned lovers.

No interest in this. Hypothetically, sure, Clarice is an amazing character who could carry her own show and even leaving my love for Hannibal aside this just looks vanilla and whatever.

 

[Pennywise]

'Clarice' producers break silence on 'Lambs' sequel with 5 major revelations

Here are five new revelations about the upcoming series.

1 . The show’s 1993 setting is significant

Clarice picks up one year after the events in Demme's film. The show's fictional version of the FBI is reeling from a series of real-life disasters that all took place within six months – the tragedies of Waco and Ruby Ridge, and the first World Trade Center bombing. “The FBI has just had their asses handed to them, and that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on Clarice and all the characters in the FBI building,” executive producer Alex Kurtzman says. Moreover, the film portrayed Clarice as grappling with a law enforcement world heavily dominated by men at a time when women had less power, an aspect the show will explore as well. “'Don’t silence me, don’t marginalize me' — all that vocabulary didn’t exist,” Lumet adds. “We wanted to make it as tough on her as possible.”


2 . Clarice won’t (and can't) mention Hannibal Lecter

The rights to author Thomas Harris’ characters are bewilderingly divided between MGM and the Dino De Laurentiis Company. So the CBS show will have all the Harris characters that NBC’s Hannibaldidn't have — such as Starling, her colleague Ardelia Mapp (Devyn Tyler), Deputy Assistant Attorney General Paul Krendler (Michael Cudlitz), the late serial killer Buffalo Bill, and a few others. And all of Starling's experiences with Dr. Lecter still happened in this new story, and the cannibal doctor remains at large. But Hannibal is, legally speaking, He Who Shall Not Be Named. "I’m still trying to understand how the rights are divided,” Kurtzman says. “But it's been quite liberating because we have no interest in writing about Hannibal — not because we didn't love the films and the show, but because it was done so well by so many people that it didn't feel fresh for us.”


3. Season 1 won’t have a traditional serial killer

It would be too obvious, say producers, to kick off with another murderer like Buffalo Bill or Hannibal the Cannibal (and, perhaps, risk the show suffering by comparison to those iconic Silence villains). Instead, there’s “an entity that represents something that we deal with in our lives all the time,” Kurtzman teases. “It’s a more expanded, nuanced, complicated, and topical version of a serial killer.” And while the show's style seems to evoke Demme's film to some degree, the team is trying to avoid replicating the movie's signature look too closely as well. "We're looking for not to repeat what Demme did, because I think the biggest mistake that we could make would be to mirror the style of that," Kurtzman says. "We harness the spirit of it and ask, 'What was he doing that was so meaningful and how do we interpret it now, 30 years later, for a modern audience?'"



4 . Clarice will tackle racial issues

Demme famously critiqued the male gaze in The Silence of the Lambs long before that term, coined by filmmaker Laura Mulvey, was widely known. The director flipped the usual Hollywood script by framing scenes from Starling's perspective amid a law enforcement world where men were either openly skeptical of her competence, leering in their desire for her, or both. Similarly, the series will explore the white gaze via Starling's FBI colleague Ardelia Mapp. “There was the male gaze in the movie, but baked into our scripts is the white gaze that Ardelia has to function under and navigate," Lumet says. "There's no 'black best friend' thing going on here, that would be intolerable to us. We take a big bite into the relationship between a young black woman and a young white woman who are best friends, and have each other's complete support, yet have never had the conversation about the differences in their lives – and Clarice has a lot of catching up to do. While Ardelia needs to navigate having a best friend who is at the same level as her – in terms of intellect and power – who is now famous all over the world.”


5. Catherine Martin is a major character, and she adopted Buffalo Bill's dog

The U.S. senator’s daughter (Marnee Carpenter in the show) who spent most of Silence being tormented gets to do much more here than "put the lotion in the basket." “Catherine Martin is a strange, fun-house-mirror version of Clarice,” Kurtzman says. “They both shared this hell experience, but have been marked in different ways. Whereas Clarice is running from the fear and the pain, psychologically, Catherine is still in that well. So she is like a truth-teller.” Martin also adopted Buffalo Bill’s infamous poodle Precious – which sounds like the worst possible option for her emotional support animal, but it apparently works for her. "One of the ways in which Catherine has dealt with her trauma with Bill is that she has adopted Precious as her own dog – the dog that represented torture, the dog that represented the killer, the dog that represented everything." Adds Lumet: "The dog also represented warmth, and light and freedom. The only warmth she had in this stone room. What does that mean? Are you going to fall in love with the thing that represents the weirdest, most f--ked up thing in your life?"

 

[Hunter Rider]

Looking forward to seeing a full trailer for this, sounds like they are taking an interesting approach.

 

[Schlosser85]

I don't see this generating a lot of interest, especially when people realize Hannibal Lecter is completely uninvolved.

 

[DarkKnight88]

Yeah, I’d dig it much more if Jodie Foster was returning for a post-Hannibal older Clarice series.

 

[Pennywise]

 

[Pennywise]

 

[Schlosser85]

I don't see a way this doesn't feel unsatisfactory to viewers with Hannibal Lecter being the elephant in the room that everyone wants a reference to and never gets.

And frankly, without Lecter and their dynamic, Clarice is a standard-issue smart tough policewoman.

 

[TheFuture]

They'll have Catherine Martin, I assume interacting with Clarice, but no mention of Lecter?

That sounds like more than Kurtzmann can handle to a satisfying degree.

 

[moviefreak]

I agree with Schlosser85 -- this feel like a standard CBS TV series.

With no Hannibal Lecter, the story wouldn't be compelling with the Clarice - Lecter dynamics as with Hopkin's (Lecter) & Foster's (Clarice) and Mikkelsen's (Lecter) & Anderson's (Du Maurier). Fuller's Hannibal is a masterpiece of TV series and I don't believe that CBS' Clarice will ever approach that level.

Wait a minute, Kurtzmann is the show runner? Okay, I'm not interested. lol

 

[TheFuture]

It really does sound like more of the same from tv shows these days that take on a classic property; using something established as a vehicle to push current topics, and not subtlety, instead of focusing on the story itself doing the talking. No surprise from Kurtzmann given his sledgehammer over the head subtlety with his Star Trek series.