Ever since late last year, any information regarding the upcoming Netflix adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events has been minimal. All that was known about the upcoming series is that Neil Patrick Harris was cast as Count Olaf.
As Violet Baudelaire said in the sixth installment of the series, “If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives.” Thankfully, we don’t have to wait any longer to see that it was a Very Fortunate Decision to cast Harris as Count Olaf.
Barely even recognized Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf on set today! Photo by @pursuit23 #yvrshoots pic.twitter.com/mmN0R2uDYY
— Lindsay B (@lemon_buzz) April 25, 2016
Jim Carrey’s portrayal of the Count in the 2004 adaptation of the series was pretty good, but it seems that Harris is able to embody the character even more scarily accurate to the illustrations.
The unfortunate stories follow the tragic lives of the Baudelaire siblings after the very unfortunate event that resulted in the death of the Baudelaire parents.
The 13 novels by the the elusive author Snicket, who is often mistaken for Daniel Handler (but they are obviously not the same person) first came out in 1999 with the first two books The Bad Beginning and The Reptile Room. The story came to a close in 2006 with final installment, appropriately entitled The End, putting Snicket’s final thoughts on story of the Baudelaires while simultaneously keeping their future ambiguous with the final illustration indicating that things might not have ended the way Snicket claims.
Snicket, himself, seems apprehensive of the story coming to Netflix.
“I can’t believe it,” said the author from an unknown location in a statement supplied by Netflix. “After years of providing top-quality entertainment on demand, Netflix is risking its reputation and its success by associating itself with my dismaying and upsetting books.”
For those who are familiar with the series, this hesitation to tell the story is not uncommon with Snicket, who constantly questioned the audience’s reasoning for reading the books.
Although it is uncertain how many episodes the series will have or just which stories will be told during this first season, there are at least some clues to what the series will entail.
The teaser trailer doesn’t give much but could allow viewers to infer that the events which take place in the first three books, in their respective order of The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window, could be the focal point of the first season.
Hopefully, the Netflix series will do a better job of staying within the chronology of the stories than the 2004 adaptation. While the movie was able to focus on the first three stories, the wedding toward the end of the movie was actually a part of the first book. The movie also gave more of a certainty that the siblings’ story ended when, technically, their story was truly just beginning.
A Series of Unfortunate Events will be premiering later this year on Netflix.