A Series Of Unfortunate Events - Netflix adaptation of novel series

Netflix has acquired the rights to create a "A Series of Unfortunate Events" series, in co-production with Paramount Pictures. Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, will be executively producing.

...I really need to get Netflix.

Seems like a really cool idea! Considering the movie was terrible, I'm all for this.

I really need to get Netflix now.

I already have Netflix, but I didn't really feel the movie. I only saw it at the time because Jim Carry was in it.

Can't wait, and given Netflix's track record for their original series I have a lot of faith in it. I loved the books. If I were a tattoo person, I'd want Olaf's eye tattoo on my ankle

If this fails, I hope that Lemony Snicket lets us know how he feels about Mr. Handler signing away his story AGAIN. The best part of the movie was the commentary where he told the director how much the movie sucked.

I'm looking forward to this, but I'm concerned about a number of things. Considering how much is left unanswered by the end of the series, I see LOST happening all over again here...

Do you think they can pull some Adaptation Expansion and explain everything?

I doubt they'll do that, as it's the central theme of the ending. Not a theme everyone liked, but...

And this time they better remember to give Klaus his glasses! I had no idea how they expected for the fourth book's plot to occur without Klaus' glasses.

And they better not sideline Violet in favor of making Klaus the protagonist AGAIN

Its not a theme that everyone liked but it really brings in a lot of questions about why go through the effort of including all of these details if, quite simply, your somewhat wasting screen time for other parts of the plot. Books can, ultimately, have as many details they want. TV needs to be concise and tightly written. So, why should I spend time adapting all these scenes about V.F.D. and Sugarbowl if its never going to really come up again?

TV is a vastly different medium than Novels.

I like the film, but it could have been better. I really want to get Netflix.

This is probably gonna be the first Netflix series I'll watch. I was really into the books for a while.

Do we know if this is going to be a miniseries or a full series?

How did they sideline Violet in favor of making Klaus the protagonist?

Just about everything Violet does in the books is given to Klaus, Klaus is made the main focus because he's not an icky girl, and it's Klaus who foils Olaf's scheme to marry Violet and she just sits there and let him almost marry her.

I may be misremembering, but I always got the idea Violet was the sibling that was very much "in charge" in the books, being the oldest and most physically capable; Klaus was a bookworm and Sunny was a baby. I can't be sure, but I think Klaus' actor in the movie was OLDER than Emily Browning, too.

edited 6th Nov '14 12:32:09 PM by maxwellelvis

Which scenes are you thinking of, besides that one?

Violet was awesome in the books! She made a elastic belt out of stuff she found in a closet (I think it was the closet; it might have been the room in general) to escape from a burning hospital - while she was drugged out of her skull!

edited 6th Nov '14 12:36:05 PM by KarkatTheDalek

I think it's Klaus that gets them out of the deathtrap on the railroad, for one.

That never happened in the books though, did it?

Granted, that does kind of sound like something Violet would usually do, unless it was a trivial matter that had nothing to do with mechanical know-how.

They added it to the movie because you just can't open a movie on a forced marriage like that, so they needed a new reason to move the Baudelaires away from Olaf and into Dr. Montgomery Montgomery's care.

He saves them from the car death trap, he solves Aunt Josephine's will, defies Olaf and saves Sunny instead while also saving Violet from the marriage, and other things. He also got a case of adaptational attractiveness compared to how the book depicts him.

I don't think the movie was really all that terrible. I actually rather liked it. What were the issues with it?

Tone issues, for one. The movie made the Unfortunate Events far more humorous and a lot Lighter and Softer in a bad way, turning Count Olaf into a goofball and making Sunny much too wordy for her age. Sunny was Wise Beyond Her Years, not a little smart-mouth. Also the pacing is terrible, but that's what you get for mashing three books together and squeezing out all the atmospheric portions. Finally, Jim Carrey. He is just utterly miscast as Count Olaf.

To be fair, Sunny was already rather talkative in the books and the series was rather funny during a number of scenes. As I recall, things got less funny and quirky around Austire Accademy or Ezratz Elevator. I thought Violet was perfectly cast and Klaus was good too, if maybe just didn't have the right material for the character.

I thought Olaf was fine when he was being a bit over dramatic (Always loved that "Oh. I screwed that up. Give me the line again!" "...Our parents are... dead?") but, when he was meant to be abusive and nasty, he just wasn't horrible enough and more of that iffy Jim Carry/Will Farrell man child. So I see the issues there.

And, I can at least understand mashing three books together. Doing 13 films would take ages and not even a year passes between Book 1 and Book 11 or something if I remember correctly. Makes me wonder how they'll split up the series on TV then???

I want this so badly.

Moreover, I want this to be a very tongue in cheek parody of children's edutainment programs. There can be a Lemony Lecture after each episode in which he informs children how to cook fine cuisine, what words such as "denouement" mean, and how to use various VFD codes.

I must ask if Count Olaf was a SS Officer in the books (which I'm unfamiliar with), because in the movie he was pretty goddamn sinister (such as the scene he advances towards Uncle Monty in the dark and murders him), only Laughably Evil but no less depraved.

Heavens no. The general technology level of the books seems to be somewhere between the two World Wars; by Lemony Snicket's digressions we can be sure that at least the First World War took place. Wherever the Baudelaires live, it doesn't seem to be Germany; as far as I know, there are no deserts in Germany, and the Village of Fowl Devotees is in a desert. Either way, most of Olaf's friends seem to be the kinds of people that would be killed by the Nazis for being freaks.