Jabarkan Produksi dari Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events dalam bahasa melayu

Nickelodeon Movies membeli film rights serial buku A Series of Unfortunate Events pada Mei 2000. Paramount Pictures, pemilik Nickelodeon Movies, setuju untuk memberi kewangan, sertai Scott Rudin. Various directors, including Terry Gilliam and Roman Polanski, were interested in making the film. One of author Daniel Handler's favorite candidates was Guy Maddin. In June 2002, Barry Sonnenfeld was hired to direct. He was chosen because he previously collaborated with Rudin and because of his black comedy directing style from The Addams Family, Addams Family Values and Get Shorty. Sonnenfeld referred to the Lemony Snicket books as his favorite children's stories. The director hired Handler to write the script dengan intenti membuat Lemony Snicket sebagai muzikal, dan memerankan Jim Carrey sebagai Count Olaf pada September 2002.

The film suffered setbacks in development in December 2002. Rudin left Unfortunate Events over budget concerns.  While Sonnenfeld and Carrey remained, Sonnenfeld admitted he was skeptical of Paramount's $100 million budget. The studio decided that changing the shoot from Hollywood to Wilmington, North Carolina would be less expensive. The April 2003 start date was also pushed back. Paramount eventually settled the situation in January 2003 by enlisting help from DreamWorks to co-finance the film, but Sonnenfeld vacated the director's position. Rudin and Sonnenfeld had no involvement with the film afterward, but were credited as executive producers. Carrey remained with approval over the hiring of the next director.

Brad Silberling signed on to direct in February 2003. He was not familiar with the book series when he was first approached.  He quickly read the first three books and was excited that "Hollywood was taking a chance to put over $100 million to adapt these inventive children's books onto screen". Handler, who wrote eight drafts of the script for Sonnenfeld, was replaced by Robert Gordon in May 2003. Handler approved of the changes that were made to his original screenplay. "I was offered credit on the film for screenwriting by the Writers Guild of America," Handler continued, "but I didn't take it because I didn't write it. I felt like it would be an insult to the guy who did."