A New Series of Unfortunate Events For Netflix: Why TV Is Perhaps The Better Format For Some Book Franchises

Eleven years after the first attempt to adapt Lemony Snickets successful book series A Series of Unfortunate Events onto a screen format failed with the release of the 2004 movie, Netflix have announced a new online series to premiere in 2016.

The movie film adaptation, starring Jim Carey, didn’t set the box office alight despite the novels enormous popularity. Many theories have suggested why the film franchise didn’t take off. Although having never got into the books, though perhaps I may appreciate them more as an adult, I wonder whether the scale of 13 book series may be better suited to the televisual format.

This announcement got me thinking about whether some book franchises would perhaps have more freedom on television as opposed to the restrictions of a film. Take Game of Thrones for example, can anyone really imagine that story working anywhere but television? Even Harry Potter, as successful as the movies are, might have satisfied more fans had it been an epic TV series. Don’t get me wrong, the film franchise is amazing, well cast and made and will remain firm favourites for generations to come. But there was a clear decline in quality near the end due to the mass content of the later novels that had to be hacked to accommodate a rigid film time. In many ways the books do feel episodic and could have experienced a successful life on television. Can you imagine; a co-production between the BBC and HBO, 7 seasons with 10 episodes in each with a clear beginning, middle and end? I know I’m getting carried away but it certainly could have worked.

So are there any other film franchises that perhaps lost it’s way of the big screen and would have a more comfortable and creative home on the ever expanding small screen?

You’ll have to be the judge of that, but one does spring to mind immediately.

Darren Shan is in my opinion, one of contemporary literature's best children’s authors, up there with Rowling and Horowitz due to his exploration of themes that will inevitably be too grim for some readers, but alright for others. When the rights to his 12 part book series The Saga of Darren Shan were bought by Universal Studio in the late noughties, I believed no other book franchise deserved the film treatment any more. The first movie, Cirque Du Freak: The Vampires Assistant, was released in 2009 during the vampire boom of the era alongside Twilight, The Vampire Diaries and True Blood. Along with the latter of those releases, Saga of Darren Shan I felt was heads and tales above these outputs due to the more unsettling tone and intriguing story. 

However the film failed at the box office and all options of a sequel disappeared like vampires in the daytime. But why did the film not work? While Shan’s 12 book series tells one epic story, every three books tells one particular story seeing the titular protagonist’s journey of becoming a vampire. The 2009 movie was adapted from the first three novels (trilogy) and the scale I believe was more suited to episodic TV. The main issue with TV would be the audience. The novels are aimed for children readers, but the themes would perhaps be too dark for CBBC viewers, unless the show tried to be like the 90's Goosebumps TV series. The film was considerably lighter in tone and came across like a naff and overtly safe kid’s film that patronised its audience. 

Since 2001, when the first Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies were released, almost every book franchise have attempted the transition to the big screen. And for every Hunger Games or Twilight, there’s been Eragon and Stormbreaker. Hopefully with shows like Game of Thrones and next years A Series of Unfortunate Events proving that TV is just as credible a format to adapt to, others franchises will hopefully get the adaptation treatment they deserve.