I'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?
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.
"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
The 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.
Maybe 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.
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.
^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.
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.
If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it?
These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.