Mads Mikkelsen thought Hannibal was about Hannibal the Conqueror at first

Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal in the TV series

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Mads Mikkelsen hilariously thought when he first got a script for Hannibal it was about Hannibal the Conqueror!

The 59-year-old Danish star imagined he was being asked to star in a historical epic about the real-life military leader who led an entire army including elephants across the Alps to attack the Roman Republic. When of course he was in fact being asked to star as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the NBC drama that aired between 2013 and 2015.

The other Hannibal: Hannibal the Carthaginian General (Image credit: Getty Images)

Speaking at the Hannibal reunion panel at Emerald City Comic Con 2025 [quotes via Popverse], Mads explained that when the scripts turned up he didn’t initially get around to reading them.

"In the beginning, I got a few scripts called Hannibal. I didn’t read them for a while because I was busy. And I honestly thought it was Hannibal the Conqueror."

He added: "And then I read it, and I was like, 'What is this? What is going on here'."

Thankfully, having read the script the actor agreed to take the role and the rest is TV history. Or is it history because Mads, who famously starred opposite Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, also spoke about how he’d like to see the show make a revival. It ended on a cliffhanger with Hannibal and criminal profiler Will Graham (played by High Dancy) falling into the sea and he’d like to see the story completed.

"Why would we want to see an ending? We want to see it continued," he said. He went on: "Obviously, there's no way at least Hannibal's not going to survive that, and so is Will. It's just a question of how much we jump in time because if we do a jump of six or seven years, it can be very interesting what these guys are doing now. So, I don’t want to see an ending, I want to see a fresh start."

Fans hoping for a revival will be delighted by the comments and will be hopeful that perhaps the show isn't dead after all. In the US Hannibal is free to watch if you have Prime Video, while UK users can watch Hannibal on Netflix. And just to be clear it’s about the killer and not the military leader!