Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) on Netflix
PG20041h 48mAdventureComedyFamily
After a fire destroys their home and kills their parents, Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire are placed in the care of Count Olaf, a stage actor scheming to seize their inheritance.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.8/10233,016 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes72%
Trailer
Plot summary
Violet Baudelaire, fourteen and an inventor, her twelve-year-old brother Klaus, a bibliophile, and their infant sister Sunny lose their parents and their home in a fire. Mr. Poe, the banker who manages the family's affairs, leaves the three of them with Count Olaf, a stage actor and a distant relative. Olaf treats them harshly and leaves all the housework to them while he schemes to obtain the Baudelaire fortune, which stays in the bank's custody until Violet's eighteenth birthday. Violet makes devices from everyday items, Klaus draws on an encyclopedic knowledge of books, and Sunny speaks in babble that only her siblings can follow. The writer Lemony Snicket documents their whereabouts.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Daniel Handler, who wrote the books, produced eight drafts of the script for Barry Sonnenfeld before Robert Gordon replaced him. When the Writers Guild offered Handler a screenwriting credit on the finished film, he refused it as an insult to the man who actually wrote it.
- Jim Carrey shaved his head bald so that Count Olaf's prosthetic make-up would go on faster and sit more comfortably, and he built Olaf's voice by blending Orson Welles with Bela Lugosi.
- Emily Browning auditioned in Australia and screen tested as Violet using an English accent for Barry Sonnenfeld's version. She was only cast once Brad Silberling took over, and the character's accent was then switched to American.
- After 21 weeks on the Paramount stages the production moved to Downey Studios, a former NASA facility, for eight more weeks, where the crew built a circular railroad crossing with forced perspective and a water tank holding over a million gallons.
- Filming with real infants was risky, so four of baby Sunny's shots were done with motion capture, including her hanging from a table by her teeth. Animation supervisor Colin Brady recorded the motion capture using his own baby daughter.
- Paramount and DreamWorks thought Brad Silberling's first cut, delivered in August 2004, was too dark for a family audience, ran test screenings and had the film recut.
