Nick Picks | Why A Series of Unfortunate Events May Work Better as a Netflix Original

Welcome to Nick Picks, a regular column by Nick Spake. There are countless important questions regarding the current state of cinema and I’m here to answer them.

There’s been talk for a while now about Netflix developing Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events into an original series. Variety recently reported that Netflix is moving forward with the project, hiring Mark Hudis of True Blood as a showrunner and executive producer. The TV series has also found a director in Barry Sonnenfeld, who previously brought us the Men in Black movies, the Addams Family movies, and the pilot for Pushing Daisies.

Sonnenfeld’s wonderful sense of whimsy and dark humor makes him the perfect visionary to bring Snicket’s beloved books to life. Of course this won’t be the first time A Series of Unfortunate Events was adapted. Back in 2004, the talented Brad Silberling helmed a feature film interpretation starring Jim Carrey as Count Olaf. The film was supposed to be the launching point for a franchise, but failed to make enough money. Since A Series of Unfortunate Events couldn’t inspire even one theatrical sequel, you might assume that the film was pretty bad. That really wasn’t the case, however.

In all fairness, Silberling did an exceptional job at realizing Snicket’s universe through stunning art direction, costume design, and Oscar-winning makeup. What’s more, Carrey completely lost himself in the role of Count Olaf and his various other personas. It should also be noted that the film came out at a time when every other young adult adaptation was just trying to mimic Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. A Series of Unfortunate Events, however, stood out with its own unique atmosphere. So if the movie was actually good, why didn’t it spark a franchise? Well, the film did have one major problem in the pacing department.

Changes are inevitable in any adaption. Sometime certain story arks and characters need to be condensed in order to fit the bare essentials into a two hour movie. This proved especially difficult with A Series of Unfortunate Events, as there are 13 books total. That’s almost twice the amount of books in the Harry Potter series. Granted, even the shortest Harry Potter novel has a higher word count than the longest Series of Unfortunate Events novel, but that’s still a ton of material to cover.

One luxury that Harry Potter had was that the main story took place over the course of seven years. Thus, the filmmakers didn’t have to worry about the young stars becoming too old to play the parts. They could take their time and even split the final novel into two movies. In A Series of Unfortunate Events, the three Baudelaire orphans remain roughly around the same age for all 13 books. So rather than getting a decade to adapt the entire story like Harry Potter did, A Series of Unfortunate Events would have to rush the entire story out as fast as possible.

The only way to cover every book in the series would be to squeeze about three of them into each movie. That’s exactly what they did in the 2004 adaptation, which encompassed The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window. While the filmmakers did their best given the time limitation, A Series of Unfortunate Events felt incredibly rushed. We’d jump from one new character and new location to another rather quickly, leaving little time for anyone or anything to leave a huge impression on us. As much as fans complain that the Harry Potter movies cut out too much, they still took more than enough time to develop the characters, the environment, and the story. In A Series of Unfortunate Events, everything goes by so fast that you can never really lose yourself in this world.

This just goes to show that sometimes it’s impossible for a movie to completely do justice to a literary work. That’s why George R.R. Martin rejected the idea of his Song of Ice and Fire books getting the Hollywood treatment. Even if each movie were three or four hours long, too much essential material would’ve been lost. With HBO developing some of the most cinematic shows of all time, though, TV became the perfect venue for Game of Thrones. Likewise, Netflix seems like the ideal home for A Series of Unfortunate Events.

While A Series of Unfortunate Events tells a serialized story, every book feels episodic. The Baudelaire orphans are always in a new place meeting new colorful people and facing a new crisis while also dealing with their overarching dilemma. As a TV series, these delightfully grim characters and locations can finally be given the required room to breath. In many respects, A Series of Unfortunate Events was always destined for television. People couldn’t have predicted this back in 2004 when TV was just starting to go through a renaissance and still felt like a lesser medium. Now that artists are realizing TV has more advantages than limitations, A Series of Unfortunate Events just might meet its full potential on the small screen.