Hannibal’s Bryan Fuller will run the new Star Trek TV series. Will he get his dream cast?

The new Star Trek series, coming in 2017 to CBS All Access (the network's streaming service), now has its very own showrunner, according to a press release from CBS: Hannibal and Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller.

Fuller might seem an odd choice to some, given that his latest series was the dark but artful serial killer drama Hannibal, one of the most beautiful, blood-spattered shows that has ever aired on network television. But Fuller actually got his start in the Star Trek universe, writing some great episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine at the beginning of his career, then working on Voyager for a few years.

Fuller once said he wants Angela Bassett to play his Star Trek captain

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

He's also been talking about what he would like to do with the Star Trek universe for years, giving this quote to Den of Geek in 2013:

I would love to do something on the Reliant. I want Angela Lansbury … Not Lansbury! I want Angela Bassett to be the captain, that’s who I would love to have, you know Captain Angela Bassett and First Officer Rosario Dawson. I would love to do that version of the show but that’s in the future to be told.

Now, convincing a hugely successful actress like Angela Bassett (who has both Oscar and Emmy nominations to her name) to take a swing on a Star Trek series for an unproven streaming service seems like a difficult proposition. But, hey, we can dream, right?

In the meantime, Fuller has a number of upcoming projects on his plate. He's working on Starz's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which will launch in either late 2016 or early 2017 (more likely the latter). He's also developing a remake of the anthology series Amazing Stories for NBC.

In June 2015, on the eve of the debut of what turned out to be the final season of Hannibal, Fuller told me that he occasionally wanted to do something more "hopeful":

I yearn for the days of Pushing Daisies and having a broader twinkle in my storytelling. Hannibal is very much an application of my skill set as opposed to something that is a true generation of my artistic voice. I am interpreting Hannibal and applying my skills as a storyteller to tell that particular story in a unique way, but it does not naturally come through me, which is partly why I have a great fetishization of the novels.

Whenever I'm lost in the world and the story I'm telling, I'll go back to the books and I'll read until I find a phrase that reminds me of some sort of connection that I have with the material, because innately it is not where my creativity flows. I found great satisfaction creatively in finding ways to tell this story that are unique to my point of view, but I also would love to explore something a little more hopeful again.

If he's looking for optimism, it's hard to get much brighter than Star Trek.

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