Paul McGuigan Leaves Amazon’s Carnival Row Fantasy Drama

Amiel Takes Over Carnival Row

♦ According to The Hollywood Reporter, Amazon has replaced showrunner Paul McGuigan for its forthcoming Carnival Row show…

Amazon has parted ways with Paul McGuigan, the director of its upcoming fantasy series Carnival Row.

The streaming service has tapped English film director Jon Amiel to replace McGuigan (Luke Cage), who was originally set to helm and executive produce the drama starring Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne. While Amiel is best known for writing and directing the 2009 Charles Darwin biopic Creation, his television credits include The Tudors, Halt and Catch Fire, Hemlock Grove, Marco Polo, Outsiders and Wisdom of the Crowd.

Carnival Row, which began production in October and is set for a 2019 release, is an eight-episode Neo-Victorian noir from Legendary Television. The drama, first announced in May, will be written and executive produced by Star Trek‘s Rene Echevarria. Travis Beacham (Pacific Rim) penned the original script, A Killing on Carnival Row, that appeared on The Black List in 2005. He will executive produce the project, with Bloom serving as a producer.

In the series, mythical creatures flee their war-torn homeland have gathered in the city and tensions simmer between citizens and the growing immigrant population as the show follows an investigation into a string of unsolved murders. Bloom will play Rycroft Philostrate, a police inspector investigating the murder of Vignette Stonemoss (Delevingne), a faerish refugee who flees her war-torn homeland to come to the Burgue.