ASoUE TV Series CONFIRMED.

[Dante]

I think there are a couple of things going on with disguises in the books, and one of them is that no adult or reasonable person ever actually expects somebody to put on a disguise. It's, to a certain extent, a childish idea, a fiction of childish paranoia. That's why the adults never take the Baudelaires seriously when they say that somebody is Olaf in disguise, because when does anyone ever wear a disguise outside of a child's imagination? (Mr. Poe has no excuse after TRR, though.) And of course the twist is that this is a children's book series so of course there's this huge background framework for why lots of people would be wearing disguises, but it's not something a normal adult knows anything about or expects.

But the joke with the disguises as illustrated is definitely that it is very obviously the same man with a different set of clothes, a few gimmicks applied to his face. Count Olaf as illustrated has pretty characteristic bone structure, and you're not going to mistake him. It's also worth noting that all of his Voice Fakery Disguises are basically explicitly terrible, with Gunther most notable as an insulting stereotype of a generic foreign accent.

I also think it's worth noting that, conversely to my above opinion that the movie's Stephano was too good a disguise, its Captain Sham was a good disguise. It didn't bother with the eyepatch, which I think is regrettable as again it's more naked stereotyping and looks really silly and almost certainly wouldn't really disguise a monobrow, but it was a good example of the "same man, different clothes" principle; in fact, it even adhered to a similar colour scheme to the original Count Olaf, whereas Stephano, again, was too different on just about every level.

Basically, I think that if you want convincing disguises, you have to look to the troupe. They manage to remain unobtrusive, and often cover their faces, and nobody recognises them (the enormous one aside) because they're basically still secondary characters. But with Olaf, the effect is always instant. And like so many things in Snicket's books, that serves two different purposes: Humour and terror. The disguises are simple and often very funny, but it is oppressive and terrifying for the Baudelaires to know for certain that Olaf is so near and planning something and there is nothing they can do to prove it, nobody will believe them.

[Skelly Craig]

The series will be eight episodes long, and at least some of them will be directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

From AVClub

Not sure where they get their sources from, but it would be a bit of a bummer if they really won't make 13 eps for the season.

[Hermes]

They can't intend to do the whole series in eight episodes, I take it, so this would imply a second series.

Eight episodes for the first eight books, and another eight for the last five? I think that would be a reasonably fair distribution. The break would come after THH, which is an important turning-point - it's the moment when the series is most mysterious, with TCC being the first in which we get answers. (Not coincidentally, this is also the point at which TUA was published.)

[Dante]

The vast majority of the news for the series hasn't actually been officially released, it's just credible-looking sites saying stuff and everyone else copying them, so unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily disprove this; we don't "officially" know about Neil Patrick Harris and Patrick Warburton and everyone else, either. But it would be a shame if they couldn't hack it into thirteen episodes.

Edit: We've known for a while that there would be multiple seasons (one of the other writers mentioned it), but eight books in eight episodes? Sounds a bit of a tall order on the latter end! I think we're seeing half or less of the series and that they could be aiming for up to three seasons.

Edit Again: Someone on Twitter is talking about asking us for the password to our "secure thread," and I have no idea what they're talking about.

[Hermes]

Well, we do have password protected threads, notably at the moment the Vernacularly Fastened Door thread (though there, of course, it's the entry tat matters, not the thread, so giving away the password would be rather pointless). Are they suggesting we have secret information about the series there?

[Dante]

That's what I was wondering. Social media can be so introverted that I suspect just keeping up with the news qualifies as having "secret information" these days.

[Esmé's meme is meh]

Eight chapters? Please don't. Or at least make those eight chapter focus on, idk, ABB, TRR and TWW only. I'm hoping for at least two or three chapters for each book, more than three for the most complex ones. My dream is at least three seasons. Don't say it, I want to believe.

@dante, maybe they're talking about that closed VFD board under Gruesome Greetings?

[Dante]

I've just remembered, actually, that each episode is supposed to be, or was planned to be, one hour long. So, take that as you will. But THH would be an odd place to stop (though TVV would be perfect, for obvious reasons).

[gliquey]

Mar 15, 2016 9:47:46 GMT -5 Dante said:

But THH would be an odd place to stop (though TVV would be perfect, for obvious reasons).

I agree completely but I don't know how things work in television. Did Netflix order an eight-episode series and then leave it up to the producers and writers to do what they wanted? Did they discuss how they wanted to organise each book's adaptation in terms of seasons and episodes and then decide on eight episodes after that? If they were doing TBB-TVV in eight episodes, they could maybe spend two episodes on TBB to introduce all the characters properly, but then again TBB is actually very short. But I doubt they will split it up that way if the order for eight episodes is true... TBB-TMM would make most sense to me, but that implies there'll be at least three seasons, probably with the last two longer than the first, and I'm too pessimistic to hope for that.

[Esmé's meme is meh]

Do we know of another series of books that has been adapted like this? I think ASOUE is the first one to make it so I have no idea what to expect when it comes to actual content. That's exciting AND scary.

[Strangely]

I kind of like the idea of a book per episode (For the first half of the series). The earlier entries are short enough that an hour length episode would cover the majority of the book. I don't particularly like the idea of splitting books into multiple episodes to begin with. After all each book is it's own story with structure and theme, so breaking it up could diminish those elements. I didn't mind the movie combining and restructuring the books, I sort of accepted the limitations of the medium. They had time and money constraints that meant they either combined books or just didn't do them. For a show I expect them to be more faithful to the source material being that they have more time to develop it. Granted I'm pretty forgiving regardless, I don't expect any adaptation to be completely like the book.

However I realize that for the longer books it will be inevitable unless they decide to extend the amount of time per episode. This is possible for Netflix, since they don't broadcast by a schedule like a TV network, but whether or not they'd do that is anyone's guess (I can easily imagine arguments for and against that, but seeing as that's likely a far way off it's almost pointless to speculate).

Eight episodes seems like an odd season length though. Then again season lengths have become pretty irregular in the last few years.

[lorelai]

I find it very difficult to imagine eight episodes with the netflix series I've seen, but some very good break up/end points have been suggested if that in fact is the case. Still, my heart cries out for thirteen.
I'd really love, if there is a combining of books at some point, for an episode to end with Esme pushing the Baudelaires down the elevator shaft, then it could cut to black, mirroring the books.
I agree that there's a lot going on with the disguises, from the basic fact that Olaf's eyes and tattoo are his defining features, to adults just not expecting someone to go that far. Even in YA fiction, a disguise boils down to a hat and baby carriage, not a constructed persona.

[Esmé's meme is meh]

Mar 15, 2016 23:25:05 GMT -5 lorelai said:

I find it very difficult to imagine eight episodes with the netflix series I've seen, but some very good break up/end points have been suggested if that in fact is the case. Still, my heart cries out for thirteen.
I'd really love, if there is a combining of books at some point, for an episode to end with Esme pushing the Baudelaires down the elevator shaft, then it could cut to black, mirroring the books.

Exactly. I can think of a lot of other cliffhangers, like the Incredibly Deadly Viper biting Sunny or Violet about to be victim of the cranioectomy, or the actual ending of TCC. I just hope they make enough chapters to make everything good

[Dante]

I don't mind individual volumes of ASoUE being broken up into multiple episodes for the simple fact that the books themselves are generally good at leaving you in suspense at multiple points throughout the story. There's a fair share of good cliffhanger chapter endings throughout, as has been pointed out, so it'd be almost a shame not to be able to use some of them. With that said, I will confess to having honestly no idea how long any of the books would be in a faithful adaptation. I can see the first four being done in an hour each, but I think after that it would get progressively more difficult. Then there's the fact that at some point you'd suddenly have to jump to a double-length format when none of the books differ quite that wildly consecutively - although the last four books are around twice the length of the first four, so at some point you do need that jump. So it's inevitable that somewhere along the line some books will need to be compressed and others extended.

[alexandre]

I'm so happy that things are beginning to feel tangible ! I'm giddy !