Creators Of Netflix’s ‘Series Of Unfortunate Events’ Eager To Create More Episodes
Netflix’s new family-friendly TV show, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events premieres on the network this Friday, January 13, and Barry Sonnenfeld, executive producer and director of the series, is ready to get back in the director’s chair and create more episodes.
“We’re planning to do more, but we haven’t been greenlit to do more,” he told Variety after the creators attended a “black carpet” screening of the series yesterday. “But we already have scripts being written for the second season. We have the stages on hold, so we’re optimistic.”
Based on the best-selling series written by Lemony Snicket (which is a pen name for author Daniel Handler), the new eight-episode show chronicles the tales of the Baudelaire children and their “series of unfortunate events,” which sounds tragically depressing, but like the books, it is a comedy.
In the series’ opening episode (narrated by Patrick Warburton playing Lemony Snicket) three children have learned that their parents have perished in a devastating fire that took place at the family home. Klaus and Violet Baudelaire (Louis Hynes and Malina Weissman) along with their baby sister Sunny (Presley Smith) are sent to live with the new guardian, Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris), who will stop at nothing to get his hands on the children’s inheritance money. This sets in motion the “series of unfortunate events,” where the orphans meet a variety of people, good and bad, in their determination to find out what really happened to their mother and father. The Netflix TV series also stars Joan Cusack, Alfre Woodard, Usman Ally, Don Johnson, Catherine O’Hara, K. Todd Freeman, Rhys Davies, and Aasif Mandvi.
There are 13 original books in the Unfortunate series, but the first eight episodes of the new show are based on the first four books. Sonnenfeld hopes that the ratings for his new show are good enough to warrant more seasons, which would be based on books five through 10 and then 11 though 13.
“[T]he end of the second season there’s a natural break after ‘Carnivorous Carnival’ for a really scary ending to the season,” said Sonnefeld.
Fortunately for the Unfortunate series, Sonnenfeld just might get his wish if Robert Lloyd’s pleasure with the new show is any indication of the show’s success. Lloyd is a television critic for the Los Angeles Times.
“I have no complaints, and only praise. The only question is whether to savor or to binge. (Professionally, I had to binge; but I would advise you to take your time.),” Lloyd said in his review.
He was much more pleased with the finished product than he was with the 2004 movie of the same name that starred Jim Carrey as the Count, which Lloyd found to be a disappointment.
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“With the first four books getting two hour-long episodes apiece, there is plenty of room for banter, action and off-the-point humor, and yet [the Netflix series] feels more dynamic than the film, for all the film’s compression,” says Llyod.
The 2004 movie was based on the book series’ first three books.
Lloyd goes on to say that Sonnenfeld and production designer Bo Welch are “masters of the modern screen fairy tale, of mixing the lifelike with the overtly theatrical, storybook aesthetics with darkened moods, they are the right people for this job, set in a milieu that is hard to fix in time, except to say it is not now.”
[Featured Image by Netflix]
