The Wes Anderson adaptation of Roald Dahl’s short story The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar will run for 37 minutes long only.
In an interview with IndieWire, the filmmaker spoke about adapting the short which is heading for a Netflix release. The film is based on Dahl’s story from the 1977 collection. The filmmaker explained how he knew Roald Dahl for a while and had met his widow Lindsay when he was shooting The Royal Tenenbaums 20 years ago.
“For years I wanted to do ‘Henry Sugar. They set this story aside for me because I was friends with them. Lindsay kind of handed the torch to Luke, Dahl’s grandson. So I had this waiting for me. But I really couldn’t figure out the approach. I knew what I liked in the story was the writing of it, Dahl’s words. I couldn’t find the answer, and then suddenly I did. It’s not a feature film. It’s like 37 minutes or something,’ the filmmaker said. He also added that since Dahl’s family did not have rights of the film which were sold to Netflix.
Speaking about the film heading for a Netflix release, as opposed theatrical releases of his previous films, Anderson said how owing to the runtime, it was ideal to release on a streaming platform.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes, Rupert Friend, Richard Ayoade, Ben Kinglsey among others. The film will release in Netflix this fall.
Dahl’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More is targeted to slightly older audience, with one of the stories revolving around Henry Sugar able to see through things with closed eyes and predict the future.