Carnival Row Renewed for Season 2 by Amazon

Amazon Prime video has renewed its original series Carnival Row for a second season. Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke made the announcement during Amazon’s presentation at the Television Critics Association press tour. The streaming service also renewed The Expanse, released a trailer for Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, and revealed the creative team behind its upcoming Lord of the Rings series.

Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne star in Carnival Row. The series is set in a Victorian fantasy world inhabited by mythological immigrant creatures that are feared by humans. In the midst of this, a human detective and a faerie rekindle a dangerous affair just as the city’s fragile peace falls apart amidst a series of murders that reveals a monster no one knew about.

Bloom plays human detective Rycroft Philostrate, who has an affair with Cara Delivigne’s faerie refugee Vignette Stonemoss while investigating homicides in the area. The series also stars David Gyasi as Agreus, Tamzin Merchant as Imogen Spurnrose, Andrew Gower as Ezra Spurnrose, Karla Crome as Tourmaline, Arty Froushan as Jonah Breakspear, Caroline Ford as Sophie Longerbane, Indira Varma as Piety Breakspear, Jared Harris as Absalom Breakspear, and Simon McBurney as Runyan Millworthy.

Amazon picked up Carnival Row in January of 2015. At the time, Gullermo del Toro was attached to co-write, executive produce, and direct. He co-wrote the script Travis Beacham and Rene Echeverria, based on A Killing on Carnival Row, a spec script Beacham wrote in 2005.

“We tried to do it for so long as a film that the rights reverted back to Travis as a basic story,” del Toro told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015. “And I’ve always talked about it to anyone that would listen.” Del Toro dropped out of directing in 2017 but remains an executive producer on the series.

Carnival Row doesn’t premiere on Prime Streaming until August 30th. The early renewal speaks to the confidence Amazon has in the series and potential the company sees in its future. You can watch the Carnival Row trailer released at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 here.

“It’s about racism and feminism and sexism and classism and spiritualism,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim said during the Comic-Con panel. “We kind of cover it all, and we look at all the different ways you can differentiate people and creatures in society. It’s really rich, it’s a rich world.”

Are you excited about Carnival Row? Let us know how you feel about it in the comments.