'Carnival Row' is not the next 'Game of Thrones.' Its showrunner wouldn't have it any other way
LOS ANGELES - Writer-producer Marc Guggenheim is launching Amazon's epic fantasy drama "Carnival Row," starring Orlando Bloom. He's also on the verge of wrapping up one of the CW's popular superhero shows, "Arrow." But he's quick to point out he should be a lawyer right now.
He had been, for some years, working as a commercial litigator. But what began as an unexpected favor - while in law school at Boston University, his brother, Eric, then in film school at New York University, asked him to help write a couple of scripts - turned into a sustained interest as he became disillusioned with the legal system and his competence.
"I was 29 years old. I was in my fifth year of practice, which is when you have to start thinking about fishing or cutting bait on the whole partnership track," Guggenheim says. "And two things were happening: I was developing more and more of a following for the writing I was doing, and I was appreciating the law less and less. The bloom was really falling off that rose. So, I thought, 'You know what? If I'm ever going to do this,
