A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
#1A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 10:31amI've been thinking of this for a while. What do you think Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events being a musical? I think it would actually work right well if done right. It just needs a few changes though (like Violet's age. The wedding is just freaking creepy). The question is: Who would be a great Count Olaf?
bfreak
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/6/11
#2A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 10:38amWould it be successful though? Certainly the popularity of the books and the one movie have died down a lot for the past several years.
mikey2573
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/28/10
#3A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 11:11amSomething tells me that a story about a creepy old man who wants to marry a 12 year old girl might be a hard sell.
GreasedLightning
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/11/14
#4A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 11:16am
Fair... but that's the storyline of the first out of THIRTEEN books to use as material.
That being said, I don't think this would work... just as the movie did not work. 13 books is simply too much material to work with, and no one would ever be happy with the outcome because of how much of the actual storyline of the Baudelaire children you'd have to cut out. There's no simple telling, no summarization of this series... which I think reads brilliantly but will never work visually.
I hope Netflix's proposed television series does it justice.
#5A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 12:46pm
"just as the movie did not work. 13 books is simply too much material to work with"
I actually think the movie worked really well. They told the story of the first 3 books, which was the perfect amount of material to express the patterns of the series (Baudelaires get a guardian, guardian has quirks, Olaf arrives in disguise, kills the guardian, Baudelaires have to use their skills to escape). I also think what they with the emotional arc (the parents' letter, etc.) worked really well. And above all, they seemed to understand the spirit and tone of the books, in my personal opinion.
That being said, I do think think the Netflix series has potential to work a lot better. Not sure about a musical though. Still, I'd love to see Christian Borle take a shot at Count Olaf
#6A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 2:31pmThe central joke of the series is how convoluted and recursive the narrative is. It doesn't work in condensed one-shot form. It needs a book series or television series, with their long form potential, to be anything other than an exercise in Douglas Adams lite for family audiences.
#7A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 2:56pmI'm intrigued at the prospect, but it's just too sprawling to be done right.
#8A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 6:55pmMaybe when the Netflix series come out, this could get spark an interest for a musical. They could do the movie version as a musical to make things more simple.
#9A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 7:07pmBelieve it or not, back when Barry Sonnenfeld was gonna make the film adaptation, he actually intended to do it as a musical.
#10A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 7:14pm^Reading about that now. Such a shame
Tag
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/19/05
#11A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 8:04pm
Something tells me that a story about a creepy old man who wants to marry a 12 year old girl might be a hard sell.
Ya…tell that to the hundreds of millions of dollars grossed from the book and film...
#12A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 8:22pm
A friend and I were actually writing some material for a musical version just for the heck of it. We combined the first three books and turned it into a three act musical. It was done in the style of a Brecht and Weill opera. Justice Strauss, Uncle Monty, and Aunt Joe were all played by the same actor and Lemony Snickel narrated the show from offstage.
My first pick for Count Olaf would definitely be Mandy Patinkin.
#13A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 3/14/15 at 8:24pm^And surprisingly, no one complained about it. If this came out, everyone would go crazy, like HLG from ITW. And they could make Violet older to make it...less uncomfortable.
#14A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 1/15/16 at 10:43pm
Speaking of musicals and ASOUE....
http://www.avclub.com/article/neil-patrick-harris-will-star-netflixs-series-unfo-230845
dramamama611
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/4/07
#15A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 1/16/16 at 3:07am
He doesn't want to marry her for sexual reasons...he wants control of the $$.
And when creepy people do creepy things it's ok ..we're keeping it a creepy thing, and magnifying the creepiness.
#16A Series of Unfortunate Events as a musical?
Posted: 1/16/16 at 3:28am
My interest in the Netflix show just went from mania to tepid.
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