Amazon has ordered a pilot for Guillermo del Toro’s Carnival Row

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

In 2005, Travis Beacham wrote a spec script called A KILLING ON CARNIVAL ROW, a story set in 

a noir, Victorian-tinged city called the Burgue, where humans, fairies and other creatures co-exist. A detective investigates a serial killer who is preying on mystical creatures, only to find that he has become the prime suspect in the murders.

It passed through the hands of directors Neil Jordan and Tarsem Singh, then Guillermo del Toro became firmly attached to it (it does sound like it's right up his alley, doesn't it?), but as years passed the duo just couldn't manage to get A KILLING ON CARNIVAL ROW off the ground. Instead, they made PACIFIC RIM together.

In January of 2015, we learned that Beacham and del Toro had switched gears and were aiming to turn the concept into a series for Legendary Pictures and Amazon Studios that would simply be called Carnival Row. It was explained that they always had more ideas than they'd be able to fit into a feature, and doing it as a series would allow a more in-depth exploration of the setting.

Amazon ordered the scripts for three episodes of the show, and they have been written by a team consisting of Beacham, del Toro, Peter Cameron, and Rene Echevarria. Nearly a year and a half after the project was announced, Amazon has now greenlit the production of the pilot, which was written by Echevarria.

Beacham, del Toro, and Echevarria will be executive producing the show with Gary Ungar. Echevarria will also be serving as showrunner.

Eleven years after Beacham first wrote the story, cameras are finally about to roll on a version of Carnival Row. Here's hoping it will go to series so we can see a good deal of this world that Beacham and del Toro have been wanting to show us.

GDT making PAN'S LABYRINTH