Guillermo del Toro exited Amazon’s Carnival Row, Orlando Bloom to star

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Fourteen months ago, we reported the news that Amazon had ordered a pilot for Carnival Row, a fantasy noir series from director Guillermo del Toro and writer Travis Beacham that originated as a feature film spec script Beacham wrote in 2005.

Scripts for three episodes of the series, written by Beacham, del Toro, Peter Cameron, and Rene Echevarria, were completed and it looked like production on the pilot would be commencing soon… but it didn't happen soon enough for del Toro, who had to drop out due to scheduling issues. He has been replaced as the pilot's director by VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN helmer Paul McGuigan, who will be executive producing the series alongside Beacham and Echevarria. Echevarria is also the showrunner.

With the pilot now set to start filming this fall, Carnival Row has found its star – Orlando Bloom.

Carnival Row is 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.

Bloom will be playing 

Rycroft Philostrate, a police inspector investigating the murder of a faerie showgirl. Rycroft is not supposed to care about the death of another faerish refugee, but he does, and getting to the bottom of what happened to her will come at a big cost.

Bloom will also be receiving a producer credit on the series.

Amazon has ordered eight episodes of Carnival Row, which is expected to reach its streaming service sometime in 2019.

It's a shame that del Toro had to leave a project that sounds so purely del Toro, but it will be interesting to see how Carnival Row turns out anyway.