CHUD
BIG SCREEN SNICKET
6.12.02
People keep telling me, "If you like Harry Potter, you have to read the Lemony Snicket books." While I have been meaning to, the announcement that Barry Sonnenfeld will be directing a big screen adaptation of the first in the A Series of Unfortunate Events books, The Bad Beginning, for Paramount, seals the deal.
What's the series about? Says Variety:
And says Amazon:
"This will be a movie with broad-based appeal," said Rob Friedman, Paramount Pictures vice chairman. "It is edgy the way 'Harry Potter' is edgy and if you wanted to call this our 'Harry Pottter,' you wouldn't be mistaken."
Daniel Handler, who writes the books, is taking a crack at the screenplay.
By: Devin Faraci
Contributing Sources: Variety
The "Snicket" saga revolves around a pint-sized trio of orphans named Sunny, Klaus and Violet who find themselves fobbed off on a series of odd people, including Lemony Snicket, who narrates each of what has grown to a series of eight books since Handler debuted the first title in 1999. Recurring bad guy is a distant family relative named Count Olaf, who initially takes in the kids but clearly is trying to separate them from a family inheritance.
Make no mistake. The Bad Beginning begins badly for the three Baudelaire children, and then gets worse. Their misfortunes begin one gray day on Briny Beach when Mr. Poe tells them that their parents perished in a fire that destroyed their whole house. "It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed," laments the personable (occasionally pedantic) narrator, who tells the story as if his readers are gathered around an armchair on pillows. But of course what follows is dreadful. The children thought it was bad when the well-meaning Poes bought them grotesque-colored clothing that itched. But when they are ushered to the dilapidated doorstep of the miserable, thin, unshaven, shiny-eyed, money-grubbing Count Olaf, they know that they--and their family fortune--are in real trouble. Still, they could never have anticipated how much trouble.