FLORENCE, Italy (AP) -- The ending of the book "Hannibal," the follow-up to the "The Silence of the Lambs," may be one of the most disturbing in recent fiction. So disturbing, that the makers of the film adaptation are changing it.
Shooting begins next week in Florence on the eagerly anticipated "Hannibal," starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as the multilingual, man-eating, supersmart, psychiatrist/psychokiller and Julianne Moore as Clarice Starling, the FBI agent who is his obsession.
Director Ridley Scott said the script generally follows Thomas Harris' best seller -- until the climax. "The ending was always a big question for me," Scott said Thursday at a packed news conference. "I just couldn't accept it."
Scott said the movie ending will be faithful to the "spirit" of the not-for-the-squeamish book, and has the blessing of Harris, who got $10 million for the screen rights. "I think what we've come up with an ending that is ... correct," Scott said.
Other things have changed, too, but they've evolved with time.
Clarice Starling was just a young rookie in the 1991 "The Silence of the Lambs." Now she's all grown up. And Lecter has had nearly a decade of on-the-lam freedom to indulge his perverse whims and brush up on his Italian by the time "Hannibal" begins.
But the two are fated to meet again. That's the stuff sequels are made of.
Moore, twice nominated for an Oscar, said comparisons to Jodie Foster, who turned down the sequel, are inevitable. But, she said, the passage of time between the two stories "gives me a different place to start."
"She is a quite a different person at this point in her life," she said of Starling.
Hopkins promises new insights into the awesomely awful Lecter, whom we first meet in "Hannibal" in the guise of a Renaissance scholar in Florence who reels off passages from Dante in flawless Italian.
"This is a different film, a different interpretation," he said.
"Silence" is a hard act to follow by any standard. The movie won five Oscars: best picture, best actor, best actress, best director (Jonathan Demme), and best screenplay adaptation.
"If this film comes up to the level of 'The Silence of the Lambs,' I'll be very happy," said Scott, whose credits include "Alien," "Blade Runner," "Thelma and Louise" and "Gladiator," which opens Friday. "But I'm very competitive. So it may even be more interesting than 'The Silence of the Lambs'."
Taking their cue from the novel, Hopkins and Scott envision "Hannibal" as, at least in part, a twisted love story -- a "dark opera," in the director's words.
"It is, in its way, a dark, dark romance," Hopkins said.
Very dark. Lecter in love is still Lecter. And in "Hannibal" he faces an enemy almost as awful as he, revenge-seeking, horribly mutilated (by Lecter), hog farm magnate Mason Verger, who will be played by Gary Oldman.
Even though Scott ditched the novel's gruesome final dinner, violence still pervades the tale.
How much will the man who gave the world "Alien" dare -- or care -- to show? How much is too much?
"Those are judgment calls that can either occur on the set or ... in the editing room," he said. "Theatrically, you have to employ a degree of good and bad taste. And that's the big question: Where do you stop?"
Producer Dino De Laurentiis said the film, an MGM-Universal Pictures co-production, will cost around $80 million and he hopes it can open on Valentine's Day 2001. After about five weeks of location shooting in Florence, the cast and crew move on to Washington, D.C., Richmond, Va., and North Carolina.