Wednesday, June 12, 2002 1:17 CDT

According to Variety, Men in Black II director Barry Sonnenfeld has reunited with producer Scott Rudin on Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, the first of what Paramount and Nickelodeon Films hope will be a film franchise based on the bestselling book series by Daniel Handler, who is writing the screenplay. The film is set in a distant and nonspecific world that leaves lots of creative room, says the trade.

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. The 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.

The project already is looking for locations and working on set designs, and the adult characters of Snicket and Olaf are recurring.