A project that had Guillermo del Toro attached to it for several years, the fantasy noir series Carnival Row is now moving forward at Amazon with VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN director Paul McGuigan at the helm and Orlando Bloom in the lead role of
Rycroft Philostrate, a police inspector investigating the murder of a faerie showgirl in a city called the Burgue, where humans, faeries and other creatures co-exist.
Bloom has been joined in the cast by Cara Delevingne as Vignette Stonemoss, a fairish refugee, and now the show's cast has been rounded out with the addition of four more cast members.
Newly cast on Carnival Row are David Gyasi (above) as Agreus, "a mysteriously wealthy faun who moves into an affluent human neighborhood in defiance of the social order"; Karla Crome as Tourmaline, "a quick-witted faerie love poet driven from her war-torn homeland and forced to work in a brothel on Carnival Row"; Indira Varma as Piety Breakspear, "the regal and cunning matriarch of the powerful family that rules the city of the Burgue"; and Tamzin Merchant (pictured in the thumbnail) as Imogen Spurnrose, "a young woman who sees in Agreus an opportunity to turn her aristocratic family’s fading fortunes around."
If nothing else, this show certainly has unique character descriptions. Normally I would find a fantasy project involving such characters to be off-putting, but this one is holding my interest with the noir / serial killer aspect.
Carnival Row originated as a feature screenplay written by Travis Beacham. Beacham serves as an executive producer on the series with McGuigan and showrunner Rene Echevarria.
Filming on the series will soon begin in Prague. The show is expected to make its debut on Amazon sometime in 2019.
Crome and Varma