Manhunter is a 1986 thriller film based on Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon. Written and directed by Michael Mann, it features Brian Cox as the popular character Hannibal Lecter and stars William Petersen, Joan Allen, Kim Greist, Dennis Farina and Tom Noonan. The cinematographer/director of photography was Dante Spinotti, who also served as the director of photography on Red Dragon.

The Manhunter was an American television series that was part of CBS' lineup for the 1974 - 1975 television season. The series was produced by Quinn Martin and starred Ken Howard as Dave Barret, a 1930s-era private investigator from Idaho.

The series also starred Hilary Thompson as Dave's sister Lizabeth Barret, Ford Rainey as his father, James, Claudia Bryar as his mother, Mary and Robert J. Hogan as Sheriff Paul Tate. Among the series' guest stars were Michael Constantine, Joan Van Ark, Denver Pyle, Tom Skerritt, Leslie Nielsen, Sam Elliott, Dabney Coleman, Paul Carr, a pre-Star Wars Mark Hamill, Linda Marsh, Parley Baer, a pre-The Simpsons Jo Ann Harris and Barbara Rhoades. Howard would later become famous playing the main character on The White Shadow and as Thomas Jefferson in 1776.

The series' premise would have Dave going from parents' farm in Idaho to other parts of the Western and North Central United States to solve crimes, after the death of his best friend during a bank robbery. Using a car which was well stocked with weapons, he would hunt down men who were wanted by the law.

The Manhunter pilot episode was shown on February 26, 1974. It was then picked up as a regular series by CBS, with its first regular episode being shown on September 11. Although being ranked 19th for the week that it premiered, the series was cancelled by CBS because of stiff competition from ABC's Get Christie Love! and NBC's Petrocelli with its last regular episode being shown on March 5, 1975. Reruns of the series were then shown until April.

The film was originally going to be entitled "Red Dragon", the same name as the novel. However, when Year of the Dragon (1985) became a box office failure, Dino De Laurentiis (I) decided to avoid a "dragon" title.

The prison where Hannibal Lecter is being incarcerated is the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

Frankie Faison (Lt. Fisk) is the only actor to appear in all four Thomas Harris (I) "Hannibal" adaptations (he appears as Barney in Silence of the Lambs, The (1991), Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002)).

During the filming of this movie, Anthony Hopkins was playing King Lear at the National Theatre. During the filming of Silence of the Lambs, The (1991), Brian Cox (I) was playing King Lear at the National Theatre.

In a featurette included with the DVD version of the film, Tom Noonan (Dollarhyde) said that he avoided all contact with cast members in order to heighten the isolation and tension between himself and other people, particularly William Petersen (Graham).

Tom Noonan (Dollarhyde) spent many hours in make-up so that artists could paint fake tattoos on his back and torso modeled after William Blake's "Great Red Dragon" paintings. Though Noonan appeared with the tattoos in publicity photographs (available in a Special Edition DVD), director Michael Mann (I) concluded that the tattoos were too "over the top," and discarded the idea.

SPOILER: In the shooting final confrontation between Dollarhyde and Graham, actor Tom Noonan had to lie in a pool of stage blood for several hours as the crew worked on other shots. After all this time, the stage blood dried into a thick, cement-like advesive that all but fused Noonan to the carpet.

This is the only Hannibal movie where his last name is spelled Lecktor. In all future movies, it's spelled Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

According to an interview with Brian Cox (I), the following actors were considered for the role of Hannibal Lektor: Brian Dennehy, John Lithgow, and Mandy Patinkin.

Brian Cox (I) said in the DVD interview that he based his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter on Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel.

David Lynch (I) was the first director attached to the movie, but he eventually left the project. During this time, screenwriter Walon Green wrote a draft of the script and it is unknown how much of his ideas were used in the final script.

In the scenes where Will Graham is interviewing Lecktor in his cell, the director Michael Mann (I) took care to set up the shots so that the position of the bars of the cell do not move when the point of view switches between Graham and Lecktor.