Synopsis

After a fire kills their parents, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are sent to live with Count Olaf, a vain stage actor who wants their inheritance. As Olaf pursues them through a succession of disguises and schemes, the resourceful siblings rely on Violet's inventiveness, Klaus' knowledge, and Sunny's remarkable teeth to survive a bleak, eccentric world where adults rarely recognize the danger.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film combines the stories of the first three novels: The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window.

• Although the story unfolds across several distinctive locations, the production was filmed entirely on sound stages and backlots in California. The filmmakers built the sets to create a controlled, timeless storybook world rather than identify a specific period or geography.

• The production constructed a water tank holding more than one million gallons for sequences set at Briny Beach, Lake Lachrymose, Damocles Dock, and Curdled Cave.

• Industrial Light & Magic created 505 visual-effects shots. The work included the computer-generated train and smoke at the railroad crossing, the leeches in Lake Lachrymose, Hurricane Herman, and several scenes involving Sunny.

• Some of Sunny's dangerous feats were created with computer animation and motion-capture reference footage. An animator's baby daughter provided the motion-capture performance used to help reproduce the infant's movements.

• Liam Aiken reportedly grew about four and a half inches during production, requiring repeated adjustments to his costumes.

• A line spoken by Count Olaf when he meets the children was improvised after Jim Carrey forgot his next line but remained in character. The cameras kept rolling, and the moment was retained.

• Makeup artists Bill Corso and Valli O'Reilly won the Academy Award for Makeup for their work on the film at the 77th Academy Awards.

• The film opened in the United States on December 17, 2004, and earned more than $211 million worldwide. Despite that result, a planned continuation of the book series never reached production.

• Author Daniel Handler, who writes under the name Lemony Snicket, was involved in the film's development but later expressed reservations about the adaptation.