Amazon Picks Up del Toro’s “Carnival Row” Pilot

Guillermo del Toro may soon be bringing the big top to the small screen…

Amazon has picked up Carnival Row, the pilot from the 51-year-old Mexican film and television producer, director and screenwriter.

Guillermo del Toro

Carnival Row stems from a major development deal Amazon Studios inked in early 2015 for the project, a television series version of Travis Beacham’s cult 11-year-old supernatural feature spec script A Killing on Carnival Row 

Amazon at the time ordered three scripts from the project, to be co-written by The 4400 co-creator Rene Echeverria, del Toro, Beacham and Peter Cameron.

Echevarria wrote the pilot script, which is going to production, and serves as showrunner. del Toro, Beacham and Echevarria executive produce alongside Gary Ungar.

A Killing on Carnival Row is set in the future in a city called the Burgue, which looks a lot like 18th Century London. It is inhabited by humans and other creatures, and a serial killer is on the loose.

The Amazon pilot order caps an 11-year journey for Beacham, who originally sold his feature script to New Line and Koppelson Entertainment as a spec in 2005.

del Toro and Neil Jordan flirted with the project while it was at New Line and then, following New Line’s absorption by Warner Bros., Arnold and Anne Kopelson tried shopping it to studios with Immortals helmer Tarsem Singh attached.

The project stems from Amazon Studios; Carnival Row is co-produced with Legendary Television.