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But a well-heeled one. Hannibal grossed $349 million worldwide, besting The Silence of the Lambs by $76 million. Before Hannibal even hit theaters, its producer, Dino De Laurentiis (who'd passed on Silence after Manhunter grossed an anemic $8.6 million), announced a Red Dragon redux, another try at a movie he'd already made 15 years earlier with William Petersen (CSI) as Graham and Brian Cox (The Bourne Identity) as Lecter.

''It has nothing to do with Manhunter,'' Dino protests from his limo on the Universal lot, where he has a production deal. The 83-year-old Italian filmmaker smells like lunch. Someplace nice. ''Michael Mann did a good movie, but he chose to tell the story of Will Graham, period.... When I did the [Hannibal] promotional tour, all around the world, everybody asks me: 'Dino, we need to know what, when, where, who arrests for the first time Hannibal Lecter.' And I said to myself, 'This is the reason I want to do Red Dragon.'''

De Laurentiis quickly tapped Silence scribe Tally, 50, who was intrigued by the prospect of writing a close adaptation of Harris' 1981 novel. The book finds Graham retired after a near-deadly confrontation with Lecter. Recruited to find a serial killer called the Tooth Fairy (Fiennes) who has ritualistically slaughtered two families, Graham's compelled to seek the good doctor's guidance. Meanwhile, the murderer, by day a timid fellow named Francis Dolarhyde, becomes involved with a coworker (Watson) who's blind -- literally -- to his madness.

The movie would need to take one obvious liberty. Lecter, the film's centerpiece, appears in only 11 pages of the novel. The character needed plumping. Tally bumped up a single Lecter visit to three; his capture, alluded to in the book, was fleshed out. Tally, who also cribbed some dialogue from the Silence novel, had to pen fresh lines for the madman. ''Writing Lecter is not easy,'' he says. ''He's much smarter and much crazier than I am.''

But Tally faced a more prickly challenge. ''[Lecter] had become this huggy bear of serial killers,'' the screenwriter says. ''It began in Silence and became more extreme in Hannibal: This cutesy charm crept in. So it's a much less cuddly [Lecter] in this movie.''

As for Hopkins' take on his own performance in Hannibal: ''I thought it was okay.''

Ridley Scott was not interested in directing Red Dragon. Mann, whose Manhunter deal gives him first dibs on remakes and sequels, didn't bite either. According to Mann, De Laurentiis came to him twice with the Red Dragon redo, once in 2000 with notes from Hannibal screenwriter Steven Zaillian, and again later with Tally's script. ''[We thought] it'd be kinda cool if he wanted to remake the book at a different time in his career,'' says Martha De Laurentiis, Dino's wife and producing partner. ''But we never heard back.''

Says Mann: ''I wouldn't want to remake something I did, and I like the picture I made very much.''


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