Hot on the camp trail of there is now a well-done fake teaser imagining what could happen with Netflix's take on "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events," a young-adult book series that combines dark humor and fantasy elements.
The trailer is full of icky critters, from spiders flooding out of a gramophone to a toothy leech creature flailing in a jar. There's some bug-squishing action and plenty of wriggling worms. It should get fans plenty excited about the new adaptation, even though it's not an official Netflix creation.
The trailer certainly looks convincing, with a Netflix tag at the end, but the company told Variety it wasn't involved with the video.
The setup for the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books starts with three children (Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire) whose parents die in a fire and leave them a substantial fortune that can't be accessed until the oldest child comes of age. They go to live with their scheming, money-hungry distant relative Count Olaf. It really is a series of unfortunate events.
Though the trailer is only 35 seconds long and it's full of inside references. There's a newspaper with a headline about the "Baudelaire Tragic Fire," two tickets to "The Marvelous Marriage" (a play by Count Olaf), a book titled "Mushroom Minutiae" and a recurring eye symbol (a take on the concept of the evil eye).
The trailer appeared on Sunday on a new YouTube account attributed to Eleanora Poe. Fans of the series will remember her as the editor of the local newspaper The Daily Punctilio. The origin of the teaser is still mysterious.
The cast for the Netflix original series has not yet been announced and it's not due to debut until 2016.
"A Series of Unfortunate Events" received a big-screen adaptation back in 2004 with comedian Jim Carrey as lead oddball Count Olaf, but it never became a film franchise. Netflix's commitment to producing it as a multi-episode television show should give fans hope for delving far into the 13-book series. There's plenty of material to feed multiple seasons full of squiggly, icky and unfortunate happenings. Now we just have to wait for a legitimate trailer.
Update, July 6 at 9:15 a.m. PT: This story has been updated to reflect that the trailer is not from Netflix.