Word: dragone
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Dragon opens with a scene borrowed from the Lambs novel, in which Lecter serves a musician to his unwitting dinner guests, and ends with an oblique reference to Starling. Lecter's cell from Lambs has also been re-created by production designer Kristi Zea. The references didn't come cheap, since the movie rights to Lambs still belong to MGM. This time, Universal avoided litigation by offering MGM a share of Red Dragon's box office...
Despite the appetite for more Lecter movies, the $80 million Red Dragon almost didn't get made. "Hannibal was a big hit," says an agent, "but most people in Hollywood thought it was an awful movie that almost killed the franchise." With its baroque gore and pitch-black humor (Ray Liotta ate his own brains), the movie was jarring compared with the more subtle Lambs, which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. And even though Manhunter made peanuts at the box office, it is highly regarded by some filmmakers...
...talk to some important directors," says Red Dragon producer Dino De Laurentiis, 83, in his thick Italian accent. "Everybody is scared to do Red Dragon because Manhunter is good movie. But Hannibal Lecter is a two-dimensional character in Manhunter." Screenwriter Ted Tally (who also adapted Lambs) wasn't intimidated. "I didn't have any interest in re-creating Manhunter, which to me was kind of like a Miami Vice episode," says Tally. "I love the book." His script, which explores all the characters' psychological underpinnings, helped get the esteemed cast on board: Edward Norton as Will Graham, Ralph Fiennes...
Good novels don't often make good movies. The communion of author, character and reader is usually lost in translation. But Thomas Harris' Lecter stories have been blessed with caring midwives: four films and not a lemon among them. The trick, which Red Dragon pulls off in smart fashion, is to take sensation seriously, to find its root in loneliness and love...
...blind girl he befriends (Emily Watson)--is a wounded creature with the gift, or curse, of second sight. They see too deeply into both want and fear. They recognize that it is equally risky to know oneself or reach out for another. For inside us all, the dragon dwells...