Fans were excited to hear about Neil Patrick Harris’ casting in A Series of Unfortunate Events earlier this year, and now we are excited to learn just how excited NPH was in turn.
In a report by WBT, the famed comedian joined the early morning crowd on Live! With Kelly this past Wednesday, where he opened up about the notoriously hush-hush reboot.
The show, based off A Series of Unfortunate Events child-centered book series, is a dark telling about the struggles of three orphan siblings as they attempt to stick together through the often death-defying (yet somehow still comedic) 13 novels. Neil Patrick Harris will be playing Count Olaf, the dastardly con man after the Baudelaire orphans’ fortune.
Details of the Netflix show have been scarce, but NPH regaled the audience of Live! With Kelly with just a few more glimpses into the Baudelaire’s world.
The series will reportedly be released in a much more relaxed format than the movie version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which premiered back in 2004. Instead of attempting to “truncate” the book series’ events into one movie, Netflix is opting instead to release two episodes per book. Currently, eight episodes (which should leave off after The Miserable Mill, according to this formula) have already been shot, and Neil Patrick Harris notes that the series is “the most expensive show [Netflix] has ever done.”
“I’m super excited about it,” Neil Patrick Harris adds. “It’s a much darker take on the material that’s been seen before…It’s not rated ‘R’ dark — in addition for it being for adults and twenty-somethings and teenagers, they want it to be for kids as well.”
The newest incarnation of Lemony Snicket will most likely prove to bring in a highly useful demographic, as it seeks to capture the attention of children, teenagers, and adults to the age of forty, many of whom probably grew up reading the series in their youth.
Daniel Handler, the genius behind Lemony Snicket’s persona, is said to be fully involved in Netflix’s version of A Series of Unfortunate Events. It is also produced and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who previously worked on Men In Black.
A Series of Unfortunate Events is scheduled to premiere on Netflix in early 2017.