Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Tarsem Singh, whose latest film Immortals just opened and who follows with the Julia Roberts-starrer Snow White film Mirror, Mirror, has become attached to Killing On Carnival Row. That is a script by Travis Beacham that producers Arnold and Anne Kopelson originally set up six years ago. It was a hot spec and the very first sale for Beacham, whose subsequent credits include Clash of the Titans, Pacific Rim, the Disney remake Black Hole, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea at Fox. The Kopelsons, who originally set it at New Line, have gotten close to making the film with Guillermo Del Toro and Neil Jordan, but they feel that Singh will put them over the top. Arnold Kopelson said he’s in talks with a studio he wouldn’t reveal but expects to begin production on the noir-style fantasy thriller next June in New Orleans. He’s starting to cast. The script takes place in the future in a city called the Burgue, which looks a lot like 18th Century London. It is inhabited by humans and other creatures, and a serial killer is on the loose. “I am thrilled that Tarsem will direct Carnival Row, which we’ve been developing over the past six years,” Kopelson told me. “His extraordinary visual sense and use of light and color can be compared to that of the great 16th Century Italian painter Michelangelo Caravaggio.” Singh has been circling several films, including Nautica with Escape Artists, and Marco Polo with James Stern and Gianni Nunnari. Singh is repped by CAA.