Guillermo del Toro is taking some time out of his busy schedule of saying he’s going to make things to announce a new project that will soon almost certainly exist. The director, producer, and master of the hypothetically cool movie is working on a new show for Amazon, based on a script by his Pacific Rim collaborator Travis Beacham and co-writer Rene Echevarria.
The show, titled Carnival Row, is described as a film noir-inspired detective story, set in a Victorian-esque city inhabited by humans, fairies, and other mythical creatures. And if that sounds like one dollop of Ron Perlman and a makeup-covered Doug Jones from being the perfect cake of all the things Guillermo del Toro loves, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the director was originally attached to the script when it was still envisioned as a film, known as A Killing On Carnival Row, back in the heady days of 2005. The world was young then, and an ambitious director could vigorously attach himself to great handfuls of projects at a time. But fortune is a cruel mistress, and del Toro was eventually forced to abandon Carnival Row in favor of saying he’d make some other movies, and also sometimes actually making them.
But now, working with Amazon Studios and Legendary Pictures, del Toro and Carnival Row have been reunited in a flurry of gas lamps, fairy murder, and grime. The Pan’s Labyrinth director will be working with Beacham and Echevarria on the script for the show’s pilot, which del Toro will also direct. There’s no word yet on when Amazon will air Carnival Row, but given the director’s increasingly packed schedule, some time between the release of the upcoming Crimson Peak and the end of the century would probably be a safe bet.