Guillermo del Toro’s A Killing On Carnival Row Might Finally Get Made

Close followers of Guillermo del Toro will remember A Killing On Carnival Row, the sporadically-talked-about but generally-doomed-seeming project that has come and gone repeatedly over the last decade.

The story, which has been floating around since 2005, features a Victorian noir-esque setting and the central conceit of humans, fairies and "other creatures" all living in the same world. Originally, the plan was for a detective to investigate a string of murders in this mystical alternate reality, before becoming a suspect himself. How much remains of the original plot, we don’t know.

After several script iterations, attempts to get it made as a film and problems attracting studios, it seems Amazon Studios might step up to resurrect the project. Del Toro has been given the go-ahead to co-write a pilot version of the story, with Travis Beacham (the man who wrote the original script, who also worked with del Toro on Pacific Rim) and Rene Echevarria, who worked penned a host of Star Trek episodes in the 1990s. Del Toro is believed to be lined-up to direct the pilot between feature film projects.

“We tried to do it for so long as a film that the rights reverted back to Travis as a basic story,” said del Toro. “And I’ve always talked about it to anyone that would listen.”

“We always had too many ideas to fit into the feature,” he added. “We can now really focus on the world and the politics of what it is to be a magical being in Victorian steampunk atmosphere where you are seen as a lesser being."

Color us very intrigued on this one. More news on A Killing On Carnival Row as we hear it.

THR