‘Carnival Row’ Creator Travis Beacham Exits Series, Erik Oleson Joins as Season 2 Showrunner

Joe Otterson

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“Carnival Row” will be going into its second season without the man who originally created it.

Variety has confirmed that Travis Beacham, whose Black List feature script served as the inspiration for the show, is departing the series. Beacham co-created the series adaptation with René Echevarria, the latter of whom was the show’s original showrunner. Both will remain executive producers on the series.

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Marc Guggenheim began serving as showrunner during reshoots on Season 1, but he will now be scaling back his involvement in the series with Erik Oleson taking over as showrunner on Season 2.

Oleson signed an overall deal with Amazon back in March. He was previously the showrunner on Season 3 of the Marvel-Netflix series “Daredevil” and also worked on the Amazon series “The Man in the High Castle.” He has collaborated with Guggenheim in the past on the CW series “Arrow.”

Amazon renewed “Carnival Row” in July before the eight-episode Season 1 had premiered. It is set in a Victorian fantasy world filled with mythological immigrant creatures whose exotic homelands were invaded by the empires of man. This growing population struggles to coexist under the onerous laws of humanity. Vignette (Cara Delevingne) and Philo (Orlando Bloom) rekindle a dangerous affair despite an increasingly intolerant society. Vignette also harbors a secret that endangers Philo’s world during his most important case yet: a string of gruesome murders threatening the uneasy peace of the Row.

“Carnival Row” is a co-production between Amazon Studios and Legendary Television. Beacham, Bloom, Guggenheim, Echevarria, and Jon Amiel serve as executive producers on Season 1, with Delevigne also becoming an executive producer on Season 2.

The series met with mixed reviews from critics upon its debut, with Season 1 holding a 57% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In his review for Variety, Daniel D’Addario wrote: “The race to replace ‘Game of Thrones’ has its latest entrant, with Amazon’s new ‘Carnival Row,’ a series that combines fantasy, melodrama, ultraviolence, and strained political allegory. But, for now, the ‘Thrones’ legacy seems safe: This new series reaches for credibility with gruesomeness and exaggeration, falling flat at every turn. It’s painful proof that a genre success cannot be reverse-engineered.

Deadline first reported the behind-the-scenes changes on “Carnival Row.”

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