Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events [2004]

Random Trivia For This Title:

• ^[?] Haley Hudson was considered for the role of Violet.
• Helena Bonham Carter (Beatrice Baudelaire) and Meryl Streep (Aunt Josephine) appeared in Disney live-action movies. Carter in Alice in Wonderland (2010), Cinderella (2015), and Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), and Streep in Into the Woods (2014).
• Early in pre-production, ^[?] Scott Rudin was attached to produce this movie, with Barry Sonnenfeld as director. Rudin later left the project over "budgetary conflicts", and Sonnenfeld left soon after. However, both are still credited as Executive Producers.
• ^[?] Christy Carlson Romano was originally supposed to play the role of Violet.
• The duck that nearly gets a stove dropped onto it is well known to American audiences as the Aflac Duck. He's the mascot for the American insurance company Aflac. Their ads feature a pair of people discussing Aflac insurance, but being unable to remember the company's name while he tries to shout it out, but simply sounds like a quacking duck. Paramount Pictures and Aflac also ran a series of movie tie-in ads.
• Many scenes of Sunny talking were actually partly virtual. The lower part of the face was replaced and tracked onto the real face.
• Jim Carrey's make-up and hair took three hours to finish.
• Filming stopped on several occasions after one of the twins playing Sunny (Shelby Hoffman and Kara Hoffman) fell asleep.
• Triplets were originally cast to play the role of Sunny Baudelaire. But when the trio developed stage fright and separation anxiety, and would do nothing but cry, they were replaced by twins Shelby Hoffman and Kara Hoffman.
• The film had a sequel planned, but sadly never got off the ground, even though Jim Carrey was on-board from the beginning. The movie was rebooted into a Netflix series with Neil Patrick Harris taking on the role of "Count Olaf".
• Originally, Director Brad Silberling wanted Sunny to be pure CGI. While he eventually used real babies for the part, at least four of Sunny's scenes have a CGI baby because they would be impossible or dangerous for a real child to do. Among these are shots of Sunny hanging on to a table by her teeth, and catching a spindle with her mouth, and the scene where she is entangled with the Incredibly Deadly Viper.
• Violet tries to sign the marriage document with her left hand and Count Olaf says "Right hand please". This is a reference to the book in which Violet does sign the document with her left hand, after which Justice Stauss declares the marriage invalid, since she did not sign it in her "own hand".
• The twins playing Sunny were genuinely terrified of Jim Carrey in his Count Olaf make-up.
• Jim Carrey was very excited at the opportunity of working with Billy Connolly, and even more excited at the opportunity of working with Meryl Streep.
• Tim Burton was attached to direct at some point, with Johnny Depp playing Count Olaf and Glenn Close playing Aunt Josephine. When Tim Burton left the project, Johnny Depp left as well. Brad Silberling replaced Glenn Close, feeling that Meryl Streep would be better for the role. Streep accepted the role of Aunt Josephine upon the request of her daughter, a huge fan of the books.
• After scouring ballet schools looking for a girl to play Violet Baudelaire, Casting Director ^[?] Avy Kaufman was exercising at the gym when she spotted Emily Browning on television, and decided to get her for an audition.
• During production, Liam Aiken grew four and a half inches (11.4 centimeters), requiring adjustments to his costume throughout. By the end of the movie, he is visibly taller than Emily Browning, who portrayed his older sister.
• When the children first meet Count Olaf and Jim Carrey says, "Wait, give me that last line again", was not actually in the script, it was Carrey staying in character and wanting to try it again, but they kept the cameras rolling and felt it worked the way it happened.
• The film cast includes two Oscar winners: Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman; and two Oscar nominees: Jude Law and Helena Bonham Carter.