Back in 2004, Lemony Snicket’s massively popular A Series Of Unfortunate Events novels (well, the first three anyways) were adapted for the big screen. Unfortunately, the results were rather underwhelming and so, the rest of the books never made it into theatres. Fast forward to the present day and Netflix is now giving the source material a shot with a 13 episode series.
Development on the project has been quite for a while, but this week we got a major update, as THR broke the news that Neil Patrick Harris has signed on to star as the villainous Count Olaf. For those unfamiliar with the novels, Olaf is a distant relative of the Baudelaire children and takes care of them when their parents die in a fire. However, he has ulterior motives and as it turns out, he’s not quite who he says he is.
Though Snicket’s novels are quite dark at times, Netflix is hoping that their show will have an all-ages appeal. So, how twisted and macabre the streaming service decides to go remains to be seen. Hopefully, though, they’ll remain faithful to Snicket’s work.
Aside from Harris, the only other person on board is Barry Sonnenfeld, who’s executive producing and directing. The series did have a showrunner in the form of Mark Hudis, but he’s since dropped out and hasn’t been replaced.
Back to the casting of Harris though, and by all accounts, it should work out quite well. He’s an incredibly talented actor, and though he’s mostly known for putting a smile on people’s faces, he’s shown with roles like the one he had in Gone Girl that he can play creepy as well. It should be very interesting to see what he does in the role of Count Olaf and with a big name like him now on board, you can bet that A Series of Unfortunate Events will draw a lot of attention.
