The odds of Guillermo del Toro directing Halo just got a little slimmer. The rotund Mexican director is not doing either Hellboy 2 or Halo next, instead he’s signed up to do a futuristic fantasy-thriller called Killing on Carnival Row.

Variety says New Line Cinema bought the spec for the project from screenwriter Travis Beacham. It’s the story of a Victorian city inhabited by a mix of fantastical creatures like elves and vampires, in which a detective pursues a serial killer.

Guillermo is currently finishing up work on the Picturehouse movie Pan’s Labyrinth, due out this year. After that, he was supposed to start work on Hellboy 2, though Microsoft and their conglomerate of studio investors have been trying to lure him into helming their massive, extremely high-profile Halo movie adaptation instead. So far, Guillermo has refused to bite.