With eleven feature films under Wes Anderson’s belt, we can now quickly add another. While the director’s recent batch of Roald Dahl adaptations (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison) were released as short films––so the first could compete for the Oscars––now that Anderson has indeed taken home his first Academy Award, he’s realizing his complete vision for the project.
Just after he nabbed his Oscar, Netflix announced they will release Wes Anderson’s anthology feature The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More, combining all four shorts and adding a new original song by Jarvis Cocker, this Friday on the platform. Just as another Netflix anthology release, Coens’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, is considered a feature, from this day henceforth let it be known The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More is Wes Anderson’s twelfth feature.
As for why Anderson couldn’t make it to Los Angeles to pick up his first Oscar himself, he had quite a good reason: “If I could have been there, I (along with Steven Rales) would have said ‘Thank you’ to: the family of Roald Dahl; the team at Netflix; our cast and crew; and also: if I had not met Owen Wilson in a corridor at the University of Texas between classes when I was 18 years old, I would certainly not be receiving this award tonight — but unfortunately Steven and I are in Germany and we start shooting our new movie early tomorrow morning, so I did not actually receive the award or get a chance to say any of that,” the director said.
The next feature Anderson is referencing is The Phoenician Scheme, which he co-wrote with Roman Coppola and stars Benicio Del Toro, Michael Cera, and Bill Murray. Described as “the story of a family and a family business,” expect to see it pop up next year.
As for turning his collection of shorts into an anthology feature, Wes Anderson said, “It was a special pleasure to (extremely faithfully) adapt four of Roald Dahl’s marvellous short stories. I am delighted to present them now as an ANTHOLOGY — also featuring an original song by Jarvis Cocker: ‘Roald Dahl’s Rules For Being a Fiction Writer.'”
See the trailer for the anthology below.