“The cast and crew of Hannibal are positively giddy to be welcoming Gillian to Season 3 as a series regular,” Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller told TVLine in an exclusive statement. “A striking presence on stage and screen, she brings wit, grace and intelligence to every role she embodies. Screenwriting is so much easier when you’re inspired by a great actor and Gillian has filled the Hannibal writers room with wonderful inspiration. I can’t wait for audiences to see her make a bigger meal out of the Cannibal than ever before.”

In addition to her role on the acclaimed NBC drama, Anderson has appeared on the likes of The X-Files, Crisis, and The Fall. Even with her promotion to a series regular on Hannibal, Anderson is still scheduled to head the second season of The Fall, where she plays a detective looking into a serial killer.

The third season of Hannibal will premiere sometime midseason on NBC.

Will you be watching the third season of Hannibal? Are you excited to have Bedelia playing a more prominent role in the show than she did in seasons one and two? What else would you like to see from season three, either in terms of character or plot?

The post Hannibal Season 3: Gillian Anderson Promoted to Series Regular appeared first on TVHackr.

Finale information for About a Boy, Growing Up Fisher, Believe, Crisis, and American Dream Builders will be released at a later date.

2014 May Sweeps extend from April 24th through May 21st, while NBC will unveil its 2014-2015 schedule Sunday, May 11th. The networks that have yet to reveal their season finale dates (ABC, FOX, and CBS) should be doing so in the coming weeks, likely around the same time summer schedules come out.

Which NBC finale are you most looking forward to? Are you surprised that nothing is getting a two-hour send-off? What do you think the network’s schedule will look like next season?

Thursday, April 17
8 pm Community 
10 pm Parenthood

Thursday, April 24
8 pm Parks and Recreation

Monday, May 12
10 pm The Blacklist

Tuesday, May 13
10 pm Chicago Fire

Wednesday, May 14
8 pm Revolution

Friday, May 16
9 pm Grimm

Tuesday, May 20
9 pm The Voice

Wednesday, May 21
9 pm Law & Order: SVU
10 pm Chicago P.D.

Friday, May 23
10 pm Hannibal

The post NBC Announces Season Finale Dates appeared first on TVHackr.

“Bryan and his team are running on all creative cylinders once again and have delivered episodes full of intrigue, scares and surprises,” said Jennifer Salke, President, NBC Entertainment. “The show continues to astound us with its incredible aesthetic beauty and its amazingly talented cast.”

Before the season began, NBC indicated that both co-productions they ordered (Dracula, pirate drama Crossbones) would be sharing the post-Grimm timeslot on Fridays as a symbol of the network’s commitment to scripted programming and a way of using Grimm‘s audience to grow other (inexpensive) hits. With Hannibal airing in the slot for the remainder of the season, Crossbones will either be pushed to 8:00, considering that it’s family friendly content makes it a more ideal candidate for an earlier slot than Hannibal; used on a different day of the week during the season; or slotted for sometime during the summer, where NBC could use a big-tent type of scripted series.

From Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me), Hannibal stars Hugh Dancy as Dr. Will Graham, a criminal profiler who hires psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lector (Mads Mikkelsen) to help look into the minds of serial killers he helps the FBI investigate. However, soon enough, the two become more entangled than Graham could have ever anticipated. The series, based on Thomas Harris’ best-selling novels, is a prequel to the story that began with the feature films Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs.

In addition to Dancy and Mikkelsen, Hannibal stars the likes of Laurence Fishburne (CSI), Caroline Dhavernas (Wonderfalls), and Hettienne Park (The In-Betweens of Holly Malone). You can check out key art of the second season below.

What are you expecting from Hannibal’s second season? Where do you think the show goes following the events of the season finale? Is Hannibal going to be a good tonal match for Grimm?

The post Hannibal Season 2 to Premiere Friday, February 28th on NBC appeared first on TVHackr.

-Academy Award nominee Maggie Gyllenhaal has signed on to star in Sundance Channel”s original mini-series The Honourable Woman, where she”s the first official casting announcement. The thriller, written by Hugo Blick and set to premiere in 2014, is set against an international political backdrop and features Gyllenhaal as the daughter of a Zionist arms dealer who assumes his business and uses those resources to better the area between Israel and the West Bank. Her appointment to the House of Lords, meanwhile, causes a political maelstrom.

-Brian Austin Green has been tapped as a series regular on Anger Management, per The Hollywood Reporter. He”ll be reprising his role as Jen”s boyfriend and will act as a foil for Charlie.

-Ahead of its July 11th premiere, Orange Is the New Black has been renewed for a second season by Netflix. The next 13 episodes in the journey of imprisoned Brooklynite Piper Chapman will begin production later this year for a 2014 debut. The series stars Taylor Schilling, Laura Prepon, and Jason Biggs. You can check out a trailer for the dramedy here.

-Gail O”Grady and Michelle Harrison are set to star in The Mystery Cruise, a two-hour backdoor pilot for Hallmark Channel based on “The Santa Cruise” by New York Times bestselling authors Mary Higgins Clark and  Carol Higgins Clark. The series would follow lottery winner Alvirah Meehan (O”Grady) and her best friend Regan Reilly (Harrison), a private investigator, as they team up to solve crimes.

-Fourth of July weekend will find the first three seasons of The Walking Dead being replayed on AMC, beginning at 1:00 p.m. on July 4th. The marathon will be hosted by director Kevin Smith and feature interviews with cast and crew, as well as behind-the-scenes footage from season four, currently in production. The 4th will find season one played twice, once in black-and-white, while season two will play on the 5th and season three will be split up between the 6th and 7th.

–Happy Endings is officially dead after three seasons, according to Deadline, as the former ABC comedy”s cast options expire this weekend and producer Sony TV finally called it quits in finding a new home for the show.

-Beginning August 4th, Discovery”s annual Shark Week will feature several new programs, including late-night talk show Shark After Dark and Shark Cam, a robot submarine that is used to track sharks in a new and exciting way. Also included is the first time real shark attack footage captured by eye-witnesses, which will premiere during I Escaped Jaws.

-Ovation has acquired the rights to both seasons of Smash and will begin replaying the troubled NBC production on Friday, July 19th at 8:00. Season two will premiere in the same timeslot in November.

-ABC will rebroadcast the first episode of murder mystery reality-competition series Whodunnit? on Saturday, June 29th at 10:00. The show airs Sundays at 9:00.

-Could David Bowie be heading to Hannibal? E!Online that creator Bryan Fuller wants to get the rock star on board for a second season arc. But who will he be playing and how will he fit into the Hannibal-verse?

-OWN has ordered an additional 16 episodes of Tyler Perry drama The Haves and Have Nots, bringing its first season episode total to 32. The show”s current 16-episode cycle will air through September 3 with the new episodes  premiering in early 2014. There”s been no word yet on any additional episodes for comedy Love Thy Neighbor, the network”s other attempt at getting into the scripted programming game.

–Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul and House of Cards’ Kate Mara have been tapped to announce the 65th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards nominations on Thursday, July 18. Paul is a two-time winner for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama.

-Netflix will debut Mako Mermaids, a sequel to H20 – Just Add Water, on July 26th, when all 13 episodes will be made available. Following on where H2O – Just Add Water left off, mischievous teen mermaids  Lyla, Nixie and Sirena, guardians of Mako Island, fail to stop 16 year old boy Zac from falling into the sacred Moon Pool and becoming a Merman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbWFP873c5o

The post News Roundup: The Rules of Under the Dome appeared first on TVHackr.

New feature alert! We here at TVHackr want to give you a weekly recap of our activity, as well as a few choice links from around the web of TV blogging. Every Friday, we’ll be posting a roundup of everything we published during the past seven days and selecting a handful of interesting links from various websites. Hope you enjoy.

Coming Up on Game of Thrones: “The Rains of Castamere” [link]
While Robb presents himself to Walder Frey, Jon faces his hardest test yet and House Frey joins House Tully.

Orphan Black Season Finale Preview: Something’s Wrong with Cosima [link]
After already losing Katja and Beth, Sarah and Alison are in danger of losing Cosima, who has developed mysterious nosebleeds.

The Fosters: Spoilers for the First Three Episodes [link]
The ABC Family drama, about a foster family that takes in a troubled teenage girl, premieres Monday, June 3rd at 9:00 following the series finale of The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

Defiance 1.07: A Razor Rain Storm is Coming [link]
A Razor Rain keeps the citizens of Defiance indoors, forcing interactions and conversations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, and Irisa’s visions lead her to the Spirit Riders.

The Fall: Available Today on Netflix [link]
Gillian Anderson’s five-episode BBC drama The Fall made its Netflix debut this week. The show has already been renewed for a second series.

News Roundup: Cassadee Pope to Return to The Voice on June 4th [link]
Among stray headlines this week are The Voice‘s season three champion returning to the site of her victory, Rob Lowe signing on to play John F. Kennedy, and the first sneak peek of BET’s Being Mary Jane being released.

Baby Daddy Season 2: Spoilers for First Three Episodes [link]
The love triangle between Ben, Riley, and Danny gets even more complicated, while there are endorsement deals and new jobs to deal with.

Orphan Black Marathon to Air Saturday, June 1st [link]
All nine episodes of the BBC America sci-fi drama will be aired prior to the season finale.

The Killing Season 3 Sneak Peeks: Holder Pays Linden a Visit [link]
After 18 months apart, Holder and Linden are back together again. But will things be exactly the same as they were before?

Hannibal Renewed for Season 2 by NBC [link]
Weeks after their upfront presentation, NBC renewed Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal for a second season, which will air no later than midseason. The drama’s season finale is set for June 20th.

The CW Releases Extended Trailer for Star-Crossed [link]
Fantasy romance Star-Crossed, starring Amy Teegarden and Matt Lanter, had its first full-length trailer released this week. The show will premiere sometime midseason.

Revenge: Ashley Madekwe Won’t Return for Season 3 [link]
Ashley Davenport is no longer a part of the Hampton social scene, as Ashley Madekwe’s option for season three was not picked up.

Hit The Floor 1.02 Sneak Peeks: What Does It Take to Be a Devil Girl? [link]
Ahsha may have made the Devil Girl squad during the series premiere of Hit The Floor, but the hard part is just now beginning.

More Mad Men Theories: Who Is Bob Benson and What Does He Want? (Vulture) [link]
Just who is Bob Benson, really? Vulture offers several theories as to his true identity and intentions this season on Mad Men.

Funeral Plans for Network TV Freshman Casualties (Hitfix) [link]
Say goodbye to the shows that didn’t make it to a second season. There sure were a lot of ’em.

The TV Doctor: The Voice Season 4 and Blake Shelton (We Love TV More) [link]
Is Blake Shelton responsible for The Voice‘s lower ratings?

TV’s Hits and Misses (TVGuide) [link]
Which shows during the 2012-2013 TV season either built an audience or debuted to boffo numbers? And which were the biggest disappointments of the season and will be limping into 2013-2014?

The post The Week in Television Wrap May 25-31 2013 appeared first on TVHackr.

Hannibal is the youngest-skewing drama on ABC, CBS, and NBC, with a median age of 45.7, and attracts a more affluent audience than average, two big reasons why the show is returning in 2013-2014. Couple that with 75% growth in Live + Same Day ratings and the show, while not attracting a strong live audience, is a major win for NBC. Given the show’s cheaper licensing fee and genre-bent, it seems destined to air on Fridays at 10:00 alongside Grimm, seeing as how other international co-productions (Dracula, Crossbones) are already penciled in for the same slot. Moving Hannibal there would remove the ratings pressure that the Thursday slot brought, pair it with a similar lead-in that it could feed off of, and allow it to accumulate episodes and soak up more critical attention. Additionally, its presence keeps NBC’s drama presence strong and gives them the opportunity to focus on other hours of their schedule, the latter being more evident should Hannibal make the move to Fridays.

In addition to Mikkelsen and Dancy, Hannibal stars Laurence Fishburne, Caroline Dharvernas, and Hettiene Park.

Hannibal airs Thursdays at 10:00 on NBC, with the season finale airing June 20th. You can check out NBC’s 2013 fall schedule here.

Where do you think Hannibal will be scheduled for its next season? Was the show a surprise for you, in terms of quality and how it managed to interpret the well-worn tale of Hannibal Lecter? Should NBC continue down the path of inexpensive international co-productions to fill schedule holes and garner acclaim?

The post Hannibal Renewed for Season 2 by NBC appeared first on TVHackr.

-John Oliver is set to assume his guest hosting duties on The Daily Show Monday June 10th, as Jon Stewart takes time off to direct his first feature film. Stewart is set to return on Tuesday, September 3rd.

-Oprah Winfrey’s interview with the first openly gay active NBA player, Jason Collins, will air Sunday, May 5th at 8:00 on OWN. The interview will also feature Collins’ parents and twin brother Jarron.

-KSL, NBC”s Salt Lake City affiliate, has decided it will no longer air Hannibal, citing viewer complaints about the serial killer drama. The affiliate, owned by the Church of Latter-Day Saints, has already pulled The New Normal this season, long been opposed to Saturday Night Live, and yanked The Playboy Club in the fall of 2011. Hannibal will now air on Salt Lake City’s CW station, KUCW.

–Pretty Little Liars star Tyler Blackburn has agreed to star in Ravenswood, the Pretty Little Liars spin-off debuting this October. Blackburn’s character, Caleb Rivers, will travel to Ravenswood during the annual Pretty Little Liars special Halloween episode; he’s still set to appear in the summer run of Pretty Little Liars episodes, though, which begin Tuesday, June 11th.

-ABC Family has released descriptions for the season premieres of Melissa & Joey and Baby Daddy.

Melissa & Joey – “Works for Me” (May 29th – 8:00)
Joe pursues a new job opportunity, sending Mel into a panic when she realizes he may actually leave. But the job isn’t quite what Joe expected, causing him to reevaluate his place in the house and Mel’s scheming to prove how much everyone needs him. Meanwhile Lennox thinks her artist boyfriend, Zander, may have found another muse, and Ryder’s class trip has an unexpected outcome.

Baby Daddy – “I’m Not That Guy” (Wednesday, May 29th – 8:30)
Ben thinks he might like Riley and tries to convince her he’s changed his playboy ways. Riley invites Ben to be her date at a work party, but Ben’s efforts to prove he’s dependable fall short. Danny hopes to come to Riley’s rescue, but arrives only to find Riley getting friendly with another man (guest star Matt Dallas). Meanwhile, Tucker schemes to go out with a model, and Bonnie attempts to get to know a handsome stranger…with a little help from Emma.

–Dallas has officially been renewed for a third season by TNT. Season three is set to have 15 episodes and launch in early 2014, though there’s no word on if they’ll run consecutively or if some will be held for a summer run.

-Months before their debuts, Showtime’s summer and fall scripted programming have new teasers.
Dexter (June 30th – 9:00)
DEXTER stars Michael C. Hall in his Golden Globe and SAG Award-winning role as Dexter Morgan, a complicated and conflicted blood-spatter expert for the Miami police department. Season eight begins six months after LaGuerta’s murder – and Dexter is still managing life as a dad, brother, and serial killer. As Deb (series star Jennifer Carpenter) struggles to deal with the consequences of her actions, a mysterious woman comes to work with Miami Metro, offering first-hand information on Dexter’s past. The series also stars Desmond Harrington, C.S. Lee, Aimee Garcia, David Zayas, Geoff Pierson and James Remar.

Ray Donovan (June 30th – 10:00)
Set in the sprawling mecca of the rich and famous, RAY DONOVAN stars Emmy(R) and Golden Globe(R) Award nominee Liev Schreiber in his first lead television role as LA’s best professional fixer. Ray is the man called in to make the city’s celebrities,’ superstar athletes,’ and business moguls’ most complicated and combustible situations go away. This powerful drama unfolds when his father, Mickey Donovan, played by Oscar(R) winner Jon Voight, is unexpectedly released from prison, setting off a chain of events that shakes the Donovan family to its core.

Web Therapy (July 22nd – 11:00)
Season three finds Fiona (Lisa Kudrow) coming to terms with the new landscape of her life – her politically disgraced husband, Kip (Victor Garber), has run off with his male campaign manager; Fiona’s mother (Lily Tomlin) has started up a rival business called “Net Therapy” and has poached Fiona’s assistant Jerome (Dan Bucatinsky) to run it; her romantic friendship with media-mogul Austen (Alan Cumming) is on the rocks, now that he has fathered a child with hyper-sexualized Gina (Jennifer Elise Cox); she’s being investigated for campaign finance improprieties; and her unpublished manuscript is being adapted into a Broadway musical without her consent! All this, while she continues to offer “therapy” to the hapless clients who have wandered into her web…

Homeland (September 29th – 9:00)
HOMELAND Season 3 opens during the aftermath of the horrific terror attack that decimated the U.S. intelligence apparatus, and prompted a global manhunt for the world’s most wanted terrorist – Nick Brody (Damian Lewis). As Carrie (Claire Danes) and Saul (Mandy Patinkin) begin to pick up the pieces of their shattered professional and personal lives, they are swept up in the political and media firestorm surrounding the terror attack and the subsequent search for Brody’s whereabouts. The series also stars Morena Baccarin, Rupert Friend, Jackson Pace and Morgan Saylor.

Masters of Sex (September 29th – 10:00)
MASTERS OF SEX stars Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan, who will portray the real-life pioneers of the science of human sexuality, William Masters and Virginia Johnson. The series chronicles the unusual lives, romance and pop culture trajectory of Masters and Johnson. Their research touched off the sexual revolution and took them from a mid-western teaching hospital in St. Louis to the cover of Time magazine. The series is an adaptation of Thomas Maier’s book Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, The Couple Who Taught America How To Love.

-HBO has announced their documentary schedule for the summer. Included are Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (June 10th), about the arrests of feminist art collective Pussy Riot; Love, Marilyn (June 17th), coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death; Miss You Can Do It (June 24th), spotlighting the first woman with a disability who competed in the Miss USA pageant; Gideon’s Army (July 1st), following public defenders from the south and the challenges they face; Gasland Part II (July 8th), the follow-up to the Oscar nominated original film; The Crash Reel (July 15th), a look at the life of Kevin Pearce, the American snowboarding champion who suffered a traumatic brain injury while preparing for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics; The Cheshire Murders (July 22nd), exploring the triple rape-arson-homicide that rocked the quiet town of Cheshire, Ct. in July 2007; First Comes Love (July 29th), following director Nina Davenport’s quest to have a baby on her own; Casting By (August 5th), spotlighting Hollywood casting directors; and Americans in Bed (August 12th), features candid interviews with ten American couples – captured in the comfort of their own beds – as they openly discuss sex, infidelity and love.

The post News Roundup: Kandi Factory Relocation, Hannibal Taken Down, and Dallas Reupped appeared first on TVHackr.

Hannibal fans will get clips of the fourth episode, though, set to debut on NBC.com next week. The package will focus primarily on character development rather than gore/scares or any of the procedural elements of Hannibal, with Fuller providing voiceovers and discussing the series.

This isn’t the first (and might not be the last) episode to have its airing compromised by the tragedy in Boston. ABC flipped the order of two Castle episodes, the one originally airing Monday having a storyline based around a bomb, while Revolution was pushed back a week for the same reason. Tonight, CBS has bumped Vegas from its regularly scheduled airing to Saturdays at 8:00, giving the 9:00 slot to a special centered around the latest developments in Boston. As a result of episode four being pulled, the Hannibal season finale has moved from June 27th to June 20th.

Hannibal airs Thursdays at 10:00 on NBC. The show, which climbed in the ratings following its well-received pilot, fell 18% in the ratings for its most recent episode.

Do you think that NBC made the right decision in pulling the episode? Should networks be more sensitive about the images they broadcast during times of tragedy? Where do you feel the line between sensitivity and censorship is?

The post NBC Pulls Next Week’s Episode of Hannibal appeared first on TVHackr.

What the hell?

Freddie Lounds, in a land she can only find in her nightmares, has started treading in the world of Hannibal and Will by posting Will’s story as a demented mind doing research on other demented minds. Funny thing is she’s just as demented as the rest of them. Climbing around crime scenes and finding clues, leaving behind evidence of her own that can only place her into compromising locations, making neither Lector nor Will Graham happy men – let alone the Feds. If she was as concerned about Will as she wrote she was, she’d be a bit more careful.

Will’s guilty conscience about saving Abagail Hobbs by killing her father has been eating him alive. He’s seeing her bather everywhere and sees living evidence of may other dead crime victims he comes across on a daily basis. It makes him feel just crazy enough to want to continue his relationship with the only man who is actually more crazy than he is – Hannibal Lector.

When Will shot the Mushroom Man, he told Will they all evolve from the same state. That by burying them and walking through a field they know they are there. If he had let Will bury Abagail Hobbs in a field she would finally have been able to reach back to Will like he wanted. These are some messed up stories from the mind of Bryan Fuller and Thomas Harris.

What’s interesting about it is between the two of them they can read each other better than any other person could every hope to. Hannibal says it’s beautiful in its own way, giving voice to things that matter. Did Will really feel so bad because killing Hobbs felt so good? Will realizes that killing Hobbs felt just, but shooting the Mushroom Man felt good, too. Graham admits it, but can’t truly accept it. He doesn’t want to equate killing or shooting the bad guys with being powerful, no matter how it feels in his mind.

The post Hannibal Review: “Amuse-Bouche” appeared first on TVHackr.

Hugh Dancy as Special Agent Will Graham is a standout. Although he has the title of Special Agent, he was never truly an FBI agent because he couldn’t make the cut. His mind, however, is capable of taking a crime scene and interlocking what happened with what is left in such a way that they would have been remiss to overlook him completely, thus the special status. It was an interesting dynamic to have a protagonist as mysterious as the antagonist, in this case, Hannibal Lector (Mads Mikkelsen), who we’ll get to shortly.

Very early in the hour Dr. Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) was asked to profile Will in the same way he would soon be asked to psychoanalyze the killer. She refused, stating the only way that would happen would be posthumously.

Of course, we all know the story of Hannibal Lector, the eater of people. Will determined quite quickly that whoever they were searching for was eating their victims and held some fascination, if not love, for the girls he was choosing. What he didn’t expect was for Agent Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) to seek out a well known psychoanalyst in his own right, Dr. Hannibal Lector, to do the same to Will that Will was doing for the killer.

Will’s somewhat strange and off-putting personality, something he considered anti-social and borderline autistic, kept him from being the superstar FBI agent we would recognize from the movies, and it’s also what caused the FBI to do research on him before setting him free onto the case.

Will is the kind of guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Riding along side the road and finding a stray dog, he spent ages trying to coax him into his car, not to harm him, but to bring him into his home and make him a part of his family. Hannibal, on the other hand, would probably use the same coaxing skills to bring a girl home as dinner. They share such similar personalities and ultra intelligence but they’re used for utterly opposing purposes.

Hannibal knowing who his copycat was gave the show a distinct The Following feel, and I seriously hope the show doesn’t take that route. I’ve found the confusion of extreme violence and frakked up love to be unwatchable, but in the first rundown with Will and Hannibal working together, there is something more sinister going on. The final scene when Hannibal was in the hospital with his golden ticket, perhaps the daughter he never had, the more interesting the story became.

Hannibal seems as though it will be an elaborate game of cat and mouse where we are never quite sure who is the cat and who is the mouse as so many characters exhibit qualities of both species. The hour was a great introduction to two incredibly deep and awkward personalities. I wouldn’t even call Lector evil at this point, because he seems more broken than anything else. It’s my hope that part of the series will be digging into exactly who he is and why, and how someone like Will would not only listen to him but learn from him, as well as why the FBI would be unable to see what is right under their noses.

I think it’s going to be a fun, if a bit gruesome ride. It will certainly make eating meals a bit challenging. Liver and onions anyone?

The post Hannibal 1.1″Aperitif” Review: The Golden Ticket appeared first on TVHackr.