Orlando Bloom has built a career on daring adventures through fantasy worlds, first as Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and then as Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean. Now he’s set to venture into another fantastical landscape as the star of Amazon’s upcoming fantasy-noir series Carnival Row.
Deadline reports that Bloom will star as “Rycroft Philostrate, a police inspector investigating the murder of a faerie showgirl on Carnival Row.” The titular district is part of a sprawling steampunk metropolis where humans live alongside fantasy creatures such as faeries, vampires, and selkies. His investigation puts him right in the middle of simmering tensions between the human and inhuman inhabitants of the city, and may expose an even bigger plot.
Carnival Row originated as an original screenplay entitled Killing on Carnival Row, written by Travis Beacham and featured on the very first installment of the annual Black List way back in 2005. Having earned a ton of heat, the script then bounced around Hollywood for the ensuing decade, at times attracting the attention of directors ranging from Guillermo del Toro and Neil Jordan. The script launched Beacham’s career, landing him work on projects such as the Clash of the Titans remake and the robots-vs-monsters epic Pacific Rim. More recently, he wrote an episode of the upcoming Amazon series Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams.
Carnival Row resurfaced as an Amazon pilot in 2016, and Amazon ordered it to series this past May. Beacham serves as a producer on the project, with Star Trek veteran Rene Echevarria at the helm as showrunner and executive producer. Bloom will now also have a producer credit on the series. The show is Bloom’s first major TV role. Having read the original script back in the day, he’s a great choice to play Rycroft.
Amazon hasn’t announced an official premiere date for Carnival Row, but the eight-episode first season is expected to bow sometime in fall 2018 or early 2019.
