FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR THE PRODUCERS OF 'HANNIBAL,' NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE EXCESS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

It isn't easy to make a hero out of a cannibalistic serial killer.

Even when the trick has been pulled off before.

that was the brief for ``Hannibal,'' the long-anticipated sequel to the multi-Oscar-winning box-office blockbuster ``The Silence of the Lambs.''

In the way that counts most, the new movie project is something of a cakewalk. With Anthony Hopkins reprising his superstar-making role as the urbane, insane killer psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, want-to-see levels for the film are so high that the $80 million-plus project is all but assured a huge box-office take. Hardly any other movie of any consequence is opening for the rest of the month, so certain are Hollywood gross-watchers that anything that gets in this monster's way will be eaten alive.

``There's no burden,'' a sanguine Hopkins reckons. ``You're taking a chance; it's a bit of a gamble. But I thought, let's just do it, and if the audience likes it or doesn't like it, it will still be fine.''

That inherent, how-can-it-miss? commerciality is surely what inspired the husband-and-wife producing team of Dino and Martha De Laurentiis to shell out a whopping $9 million for the rights to make the feature, which besides Hopkins stars Julianne Moore and an unrecognizably ghastly Gary Oldman.

``Hannibal Lecter is the major star character in the world today,'' rationalizes Dino, who has been producing films in his native Italy and throughout the world for 60 years. ``Tom Cruise is a big star, but to me, Hannibal Lecter is bigger than any star. He's not just another serial killer; he is a man who is full of humanity, culture and style. And when he kills people, he kills people the audience would like to kill, too. This is so charming; when this man kills, the audience is with him.''

But that huge payout for the film rights to Thomas Harris' novel was one of the easier steps made toward bringing ``Hannibal'' to the screen. Everything else involving this cheery tale of disembowelment, hungry boar attacks and much-too-fresh cervelles au beurre noir has been, perhaps appropriately, torturous.

To begin with, there was the long, long wait for author Harris, who created Lecter as a minor character in his novel ``Red Dragon'' (made by Dino De Laurentiis into the underperforming movie ``Manhunter'' in 1986), to write his ``Lambs'' follow-up after the 1991 feature turned Lecter into a pop-culture icon. ``Hannibal'' was finally published in June 1999.

Then the real trouble began.

The book was oddly structured, to start. Clarice Starling, the dedicated young FBI agent played by Jodie Foster in ``Lambs,'' was now a hard-edged, embittered sort getting scapegoated by the federal law enforcement bureaucracy for a drug bust gone terribly, bloodily wrong. Lecter, meanwhile, had been spending the better part of the decade laying low, finally popping up in Florence, Italy, disguised as a curator of classical art and writing.

The extended first chapter of ``Hannibal'' is all about Clarice's professional travails in D.C. The second chapter charts Lecter's cat-and- mouse game with a greedy Italian cop. The mismatched couple, whose edgy intellectual relationship was what gave ``Lambs'' the special frisson that lifted it light-years above the average serial-killer thriller, weren't even in the same hemisphere together until past the novel's halfway point.

And when they finally did connect ... well, the conclusion of ``Hannibal,'' besides being outlandishly grotesque for even this prurient genre, involved a lifestyle choice so out of character for one of the participants that it enraged at least half of the book's avid readers. That it could never be part of a movie adaptation, since general film audiences tend to demand stricter behavioral consistency in their protagonists than fiction readers do, was a given.

Although Harris, who kibitzed on the ``Hannibal'' screenplay now credited to playwright David Mamet and ``Schindler's List'' screenwriter Steven Zaillian, was amenable to changing this and other key plot points for the adaptation, Jonathan Demme was still wary.

The director, who had not only won his own Academy Award for ``Lambs'' but made it one of only three features to ever win the top five Oscars (picture, lead actress and actor, and adapted screenplay were the others), bowed out of the sequel project at an early stage, reportedly due to concerns about both the screwy ending and higher levels of graphic gore in the core material.

Somewhat fortuitously, Ridley Scott was directing ``Gladiator'' on the Mediterranean island of Malta at the same time that the De Laurentiises were producing ``U-571'' there. Dino visited Scott's set bearing a ``Hannibal'' manuscript. After some initial confusion - Scott thought the title referred to another Roman story, which he was not interested in doing again - the director of ``Alien'' and ``Blade Runner'' quickly read the piece and agreed to direct the sequel.

For his part, Hopkins had always been open to a second chomp into the Lecter character, providing he liked the novel and the script. He did, but obviously, he was not about to sign on for the crucial part for purely sentimental reasons. The reported deal the actor made for ``Hannibal'' consisted of a $10 million salary and 15 percent of the gross.

Whether or not those figures are accurate (substantially higher numbers have been batted about), Foster was reportedly offered a similar package to come back as Starling. For many months she hesitated, claiming that she wanted to see Zaillian's final script draft before making her decision. Dino De Laurentiis has been claiming she asked for twice Hopkins' salary, but whether or not money was a key factor in Foster's ultimate choice not to do the sequel, there are material-based reasons why a star of her caliber would logically decline the part.

These would include the increased gross-out factor that apparently scared Demme off, but also the fact that Clarice was the main focus of the earlier story and Lecter a vivid supporting presence. Not only is the new film named for the erudite cannibal, but while he's gallivanting around the beautiful backdrop of Florence for much of the picture's first half, she's stuck in a cramped FBI basement inactively watching computer monitors.

``First, I found out Jodie wasn't going to do it,'' Hopkins recalls. ``Then Jonathan called me and told me he wasn't going to direct. I didn't have any particular angst about it; I didn't try to persuade them to reconsider.''

Volatile octogenarian De Laurentiis appears to have taken especially Foster's turndown a bit harder.

``She ought to pay me to be in 'Hannibal'!'' the Italian producer declares, while his American wife, Martha, adds, ``As if she were the star of the film. This movie is called 'Hannibal.' ''

Although last-minute replacement Julianne Moore has done her share of being upstaged by movie monsters (``The Lost World: Jurassic Park''), she is primarily known as a selmmersing indie actress who has brought depth and substance to extreme characters in the likes of ``Boogie Nights,'' ``Safe'' and ``Magnolia.''

``I thought that this was a really, really challenging and interesting part,'' Moore says. ``Clarice is a very kind of solemn and solitary person who has been let down by everything that she believes in. She's incredibly sad, but she is still very active in a way. It's kind of unusual to see someone like that in a big, commercial movie; it was an interesting challenge.''

Especially considering that Moore hates guns and is easily frightened by livestock, both of which play key roles in Clarice's adventure. But the thing that bugs her the most now are questions about the actress whom she replaced.

``It's not fair to her to have her name dragged up in this all the time,'' Moore says of Foster and her decision. ``I think that those things are completely personal, and it makes me feel bad to talk about them.''

Another key player had different problems. The prickly English actor Oldman portrays surviving Lecter victim Mason Verger, a filthy-rich pervert whom the persuasive doctor long ago compelled into skinning off his own face. Now essentially a living skull with a paralyzed body, Verger spares no expense in his efforts to take revenge on Lecter.

You wouldn't know without a scorecard that it is actor Oldman under that five-hours-a-day makeup job. And you won't know it from the film's opening credits or press materials, either, since the actor insisted that his name not appear in such commonly prominent places. This has been attributed to Oldman's desire to share equal billing with fellow Brit Hopkins or take none at all. Considering Oldman's long-running war of words with Rod Lurie, the writer-director of the actor's last chameleonic performance in ``The Contender,'' that story seems apt.

But Oldman, who is participating in ``Hannibal's'' publicity push, says the whole credit flap is all in good fun.

``I was sort of the Man of Many Faces in my previous films - Beethoven, Lee Harvey Oswald - so why not be the Man With No Face and No Name for this?'' Oldman says. ``Did you read that top-billing story on the Internet? Don't believe everything you read.''

But when it came to appearance consciousness, the city of Florence took the crown. Arguably the world's greatest repository of Renaissance and medieval culture, Florence and its classic buildings had to be locations for the film to at all faithfully reflect the book. But from the start, blocs of Florentines, including the spokespeople for a local political party, loudly protested the use of their beautiful city for what they considered a vulgar exercise in cheap, horrific thrills.

``Funnily enough, this film has a G rating in Italy,'' Martha De Laurentiis insists.

Cultural schizophrenia notwithstanding, the big question hanging over the ``Hannibal'' movie is whether a decade of complaints about movie gruesomeness will have made audiences less receptive to the kinds of horrors that thrilled them in ``The Silence of the Lambs.''

Hopkins, who is mulling over the De Laurentiises' offer to play Lecter one more time in a ``Red Dragon'' remake, sees nothing to be disturbed about. Except, of course, in the way everyone seems to like.

``When I went to see 'Jaws,' I didn't have to check in with a psychotherapist to see what was wrong with me,'' Hopkins notes, then more ominously continues. ``When I saw 'Psycho,' it scared the hell out of me, but it was just a good fright. I don't think anyone who saw it wound up mentally disturbed or neurotic. People told me they didn't sleep too well after seeing 'Silence of the Lambs,' but that doesn't make them sick.

``Basically, we're talking about entertainment.''

CAPTION(S):

6 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 3 -- cover -- color) Guess who's Coming to Dinner

Get out the fava beans and Chianti, `Hannibal' is back with a bite

(4) no caption (movie ``Hanibal'')

(5) Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore in ``Hannibal.''

(6) Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter.