Fifty Shades Darker Adds A Hannibal Star For Major Role

For three years on Hannibal, Hugh Dancy fought both with and against the forces of darkness as FBI profiler Will Graham. Well, it looks like Dancy is going back to dealing with the psychology of the madman, as he’s been cast as the psychiatrist to Jamie Dornan’s Christian Grey in Fifty Shades Darker.

The Universal sequel announced today that Dancy, who’s currently playing a lead role in Hulu’s series The Path, is taking the role of Dr. John Flynn. THR describes Dr. Flynn is the therapist that Christian Grey ends up seeing to help deal with his ever growing psychological issues. Chiefly among those budding problems is the fact that Grey’s former lover /abuser, Mrs. Elena Lincoln, has reappeared in his life just as he’s trying to win Anastasia back after the events of Fifty Shades of Grey. So obviously, now’s as good a time as any for Christian to visit a mental professional.

With the momentum lost due to the prolonged period between Fifty Shades of Grey and Fifty Shades Darker, the would-be Valentine’s weekend blockbuster needs to make a huge impact and fast if it hopes to make it in a post Deadpool world. Casting Hugh Dancy as the therapist to Jamie Dornan’s enigmatic, kinky millionaire is a good foot to put forward, considering the audience for Fifty Shades of Grey and Hannibal would seem to overlap. Seeing as both properties walk a thin line between violence and sex, it’ll be just as easy for Dancy to cross over into the hit franchise as it will for his fans to follow along. But easy is the last word you’d want to use to describe the competition for Fifty Shades Darker’s opening weekend.

Not only is John Wick: Chapter 2 going to be making its debut that weekend, but The Lego Batman Movie is also going to take its first bows ensuring that there will be a healthy amount of competition for all quadrants of the box-office audience. While the odds of any of those films pulling in a massive unilateral victory like this year’s Deadpool are uncertain, a clear winner shouldn’t be hard to define by the end of the first frame. At the very least, Fifty Shades Darker should be able to provide a massive counter-programming blitz that will scoop up the audiences that won’t partake in either of the weekend’s other options.

Hugh Dancy’s presence in Fifty Shades Darker will provide even more thrills for the folks who are looking forward to seeing the return to the franchise that Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson launched with a bang back in 2015. We’ll only have to wait until February 10, 2017 to see if lightning can strike twice for E.L. James’ notorious trilogy, with the final entry, Fifty Shades Freed, set to be released on February 8, 2018.

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