Hannibal hasn’t even completed its second season, but with good ratings and a strong critical response, NBC has shown the good taste (pun intended) to pick it up for a third. The show has produced enough twists and turns and a few WTF moments to keep any audience satisfied.

Hugh Dancy plays FBI profiler Will Graham, who is entrapped in the serial killer’s games. This is good drama and the byplay between Graham and Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) is worth the time and effort.

Hugh Dancy reflects on his character and the challenges of doing Hannibal.

The Flickcast: Can you talk about getting into the head space of Will because he’s a terribly troubled character?

HUGH DANCY: Yes. He’s not the happiest character I’ve ever played. Well, there’s obviously – other than Bryan’s [Fuller/Executive Producer] scripts, there’s Thomas Harris’s book, Red Dragon, that I went to before we started filming the first season, and that’s been the template ever since.

It was just, as a description of a character from the inside of his head, the most rich material that you can hope for as an actor.

Friday night used to be pretty much a wasteland when it came to TV shows. People go out on Friday nights so networks used to dump their least interesting shows, or ones they didn’t care much about, at the end of the work week.

Now, with pretty much everyone having a DVR and the networks needing to compete with cable and online, Friday’s TV fare has greatly improved. Case in point are two shows we’re big fans of: Grimm and Hannibal.

Both are new tonight, now that the Olympics are over, and we’ve got previews for both of them for you. We won’t get too much into details about what happens in the new episodes, but you can definitely expect some surprises and a lot of action.

Grimm airs at 9/8C followed by Hannibal at 10/9C on NBC. Check out the previews after the break.

Whatever happened to The Man of Tomorrow? In the late ’70s, when Richard Donner and Mario Puzo were making their Superman movie, they realized that the lead character, when in costume, lacked a personality. He’s tough, he’s fast, he can fly, and those abilities define him. It may be impressive as spectacle, but it’s a hard lead for an audience to connect with, and so they chose to focus on Clark Kent — in short and in a bad pun, theirs was a classic because it was more Man than Super. Now, with Man of Steel, Snyder, and his writers David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan, do precisely the opposite.

The film opens with the usual prologue, though seeming far more extended here, on Krypton. Jor-El (Russell Crowe) is arguing with the planet’s elders about mining the core of their world — he warns them that the planet has only weeks left before it implodes, and as soon as he’s dismissed, General Zod (Michael Shannon) appears and starts blowing the elder’s palace up. Jor-El escapes to his wife Lara (Ayelet Zurer), who has just given birth to their son, Kal-El, Knowing the planet is doomed, they place him in a shuttle and shoot him off to earth, but not before Jor implants a whatsit codex into the ship.

Zod attempts to intercept the shuttle, killing Jor-El in the process, but is overpowered, tried, and sentenced to the Phantom Zone, a kind of black-hole prison. Krypton implodes, and Kal makes his way to earth, specifically to the Kansas farm of Jonathan and Martha Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane), who adopt the boy and impart to him the lessons of compassion and anonymity. I will say that it’s clever of Goyer and Nolan to handle Kal-El’s childhood in flashback, lest we sit through another hour or so of an origin story whose end we already know.

With the release of two completely freaking awesome trailers this week, the J.J. Abrams’ directed Star Trek: Into Darkness and the Zack Snyder directed/Christopher Nolan produced Man of Steel also release one viral advertisement each. Oddly enough, both viral videos have a similar production value to eachother.

First, the viral for Man of Steel launched, with heavily distorted imagery of General Zod warning Earth that “You Are Not Alone” and Zod demands Kal-El to surrender to him or watch Earth suffer the consequences. The video is insanely distorted, something like a scrambled message from an alien world might possibly look like if our primitive video software tried to encode it.

Most of the audio is pretty clear, stating Zod’s message loud and clear to the people of Earth. When I first saw it, I was ecstatic at what it looked like the Nolan/Snyder camp had put together for what could be a nice string of viral promotional ads.

Then, on Friday, the first viral for Star Trek: Into Darkness launched. Slightly more traditional, perhaps, with a viral video, with clips from the actual movie being shown in between distorted shots of lead villain John Harrison (played by Benedict Cumberbatch). This one plays out as more like you, the viewer, are seeing this message displayed on a screen, and Harrison is telling a tale of James Tiberius Kirk, and the misfortune that lies ahead for him and his crew.

This week on The Flickcast, Chris and Matt discuss a bunch of new topics and revisit a few old ones. Some of these include the Evil Dead beboot (or Army of Darkness, as Chris likes to call it), Game of Thrones, Mad Men, horror movies, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, Jon Hamm’s big problem and more.

They also made some picks his week, as usual, with Matt’s being the upcoming Marty Langford and Mark Sikes documentary on the making of Roger Corman’s mythic Fantastic Four movie and Chris’ being the new NBC show Hannibal.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook or via email.

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Even though it’s hard to imagine another actor besides Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter (although Brian Cox wasn’t so bad either), we’re going to be getting a new Hannibal anyway. This time, he’s on TV.

Who is this new evil mastermind? None other than one of our favorite, underappreciated actors: Mads Mikkelsen. With that in mind, and pretty much only that, we’ve decided to give NBC’s new series Hannibal a chance.

In case you’re not famiiar, the show follows the adventures of a younger Will Graham (played by William Petersen in Michael Mann’s Manhunter and Hugh Dancy in this version) as he works to solve serial murders for the FBI’s behavioral sciences unit. Of course, he can’t do it alone, so he enlists the help of famed psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter.

Obviously, things don’t go as planned. Which is, of course, to be expected. To get you interested in the show and ready for the premiere, we’ve got a ton of previews for it after the break. Check ’em out.

Hannibal premieres tonight at 10/9C on NBC.

I have to admit it, I’m skeptical. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.

As much as I’m a fan of the actor Mads Mikkelsen, the upcoming show with him as Hannibal Lecter just looks, well, kinda weak. Yes, I’m talking about NBC’s Hannibal, which depicts a young FBI Special Agent Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and his search for serial killers.

The catch? He’s getting advice from none other than Hannibal Lecter, the most dangerous serial killer of them all. See, the premise sounds pretty cool, it’s just the execution (no pun intended) that seems suspect.

Anyway, check out a teaser for the new show after the break and judge for yourself. Hannibal comes to NBC on April 4th.

The upcoming Hannibal TV series, created by the fantastic Bryan Fuller, is shaping up to be quite the event. So much so that the director of the pilot, David Slade, and series Hannibal, Mads Mikkelsen both left high-profile comic book movies for this show.

Now the show has snagged a seasoned acting veteran for an important recurring role, as learned by The Hollywood Reporter:

Laurence Fishburne is on Hannibal Lecter’s case. NBC’s upcoming Hannibal take has added the former CSI: Crime Scene Investigation actor to play Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI’s behavioral sciences unit… Fishburne will recur in the role played by Dennis Farina (Manhunter), Scott Glenn (The Silence of the Lambs) and Harvey Keitel (Red Dragon) in the feature film takes based on the Thomas Harris novels.

Fishburne is a great addition to an already well put together cast. This is one of those projects that seemed suspect on paper, but now that it is actually all coming together it has piqued our interest.

Hannibal follows a prequel story line from the Harris novels and films, but leads into Red Dragon should the series last into its third season. Knowing a defined arc with a predetermined destination is one of those touches that proves to us why we have faith in Fuller as a show creator.

The series has a 13 episode mid-season order on NBC, keep tuned to The Flickcast for any new updates about this intriguing new series.

Steven Soderbergh seems to have found his new Clooney, as Matt Damon has helped the man snag a #1 spot twice now with The Informant! and as of this weekend, Contagion.

Hard to believe a film about a virus wiping out the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Laurence Fishburne could bring in $25 million worldwide in the first weekend, but that’s just what it’s done. Not terrible, considering the film’s budget was a measly $60 million (most of which likely went to the ensemble cast).

Following up in the top 5, The Help finally got knocked from its #1 spot for the first time in 3 weeks and finally hit the $140 million mark. In third, another new release, as the “Rocky of UFC” movie, Warrior, opened to a quiet response, with only $5.6 million.

In fourth place, political thriller The Debt managed to drop off significantly from last week and only pull in an estimated $5 million this weekend.

Since we first started getting casting news about Zack Snyder’s upcoming reboot/sequel to the Superman franchise titled Man of Steel, questions have been flying in from every direction about what the possible story could be.

With names like Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne, Diane Keaton, and Russell Crowe tying up the cast, we could only imagine how these A-listers would make their way into the film. The official synopsis has made its way onto the web, so maybe this will clear things up:

In the pantheon of superheroes, Superman is the most recognized and revered character of all time. Clark Kent/Kal-El (Henry Cavill) is a young twentysomething journalist who feels alienated by powers beyond anyone’s imagination. Transported to Earth years ago from Krypton, an advanced alien planet, Clark struggles with the ultimate question – Why am I here?