Neil Patrick Harris Promises a "Shockingly Dark" Adaptation for Netflix's 'Series of Unfortunate Events'
A lot of people are impressed but reserved after the first trailer for Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events landed, introducing Neil Patrick Harris' take on Count Olaf to the world. Many turned back to Jim Carrey's iconic take on the character, and aren't expectation a repeat experience.
There will be two episodes for each book of the 13-book saga, as opposed to one feature film back in the early 2000s. The series is eyeing a three-season life span, and with Neil Patrick Harris and Patrick Warburton in the series, you know that Netflix is giving the show everything it needs to become another success story for the streamer.
Harris spoke with Collider, and said that he "tried to just focus as much as I could on being as literary as possible and try to honour how Olaf was described by Lemony and by Daniel Handler. So, a lot of piercing darkness and sort of delusional dementia.
"He thinks he’s so handsome and he thinks he’s incredibly charming and gifted as an actor, and yet he’s not. So I didn’t want to be overly charming, I wanted to be just awful. Distinctly mean. And then let the levity of the situation inform the takeaway for the viewer. I didn’t want to make him like myself."
Harris was adamant that the series is "super faithful to the books," and is at times "shockingly dark. From what I gathered, Netflix was concerned that adults weren’t going to be able to value it because it was skewing towards a younger demographic. And I think now that it’s done, they want to make sure the kids still value it and it’s not gone too Stranger Things. I really wanted Olaf to be bad. To be a bad person."
The series drops on Netflix on January 13, 2017.
Source: Collider
