The current days are quite exciting for fans of TV series. The so-called "upfronts" are the moment that decides about the future of many series and whether they will make it to the next TV season or whether they will be cancelled. For Hannibal, that decision has been made already and fans can rejoice that there will be a 3rd season of the high profile series with Mads Mikkelsen. In a recent interview with Collider, showrunner Bryan Fuller was already quite optimistic that this would happen, even though the ratings aren't that great. But the positive feedback given by NBC has some weight to it, as well.

Apart from future plans, there was also talk about the current season and the censorship that it had to undergo. Next to the psychological duel in which Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham engage, there's also a lot of explicit violence that is rather hefty for network standards. And that is the case even though some episodes weren't even aired in their uncensored form. Fuller confirmed this and gave some examples for the season's 2nd episode:

I am both surprised and also impressed.  For instance, in the second episode when Ryan Field tears himself out of the human mural, seeing that was a very surreal experience and kind of out of body, in some way.  I was watching it and was horrified by what I was seeing, and yet I accepted it as the reality that I was being presented.  I expected Standards and Practices to pull us back from it, but we had removed a couple of flesh tearing shots before the version that has aired.  It’s a tonnage issue.  So, even though we had removed some of the shots, there was still the big one left and I thought we were going to get dinged on that because I was cringing and I wrote it.  It was pretty impressive that we did actually get to air it. There were some things later in the season where they were like, “Okay, we need to pull back on that.”  It’s all reasonable stuff.  We’re lucky to be working with a Standards and Practices executive who works with us and says, “You can’t do this, but you can do this.  You can’t show that, but here’s a way that you could possibly solve it.”  She will cooperate with us, and it is very helpful.

The first season faced the same fate for the TV airings but got the privilege that the episodes were released fully uncensored on Blu-ray later on, at least in the US (for our comparison reports, click our archive). Let's hope that this release strategy is followed for the 2nd season, as well.