This week, Wes Anderson will debut four new short films over four days, each adapted from lesser-known stories by Roald Dahl, whose work he has previously tackled in 2009’s Fantastic Mr Fox. Since Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company in 2021, for the princely sum of $686m (£564m), the shorts will debut directly on the streaming service – The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar first, followed by The Swan, The Ratcatcher, and then Poison. Anderson has described the deal as more of a marriage of convenience than anything else.
At 39 minutes, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is the longest of the quartet. And it makes for an ideal companion to the director’s previous two films, Asteroid City and The French Dispatch. Written by Dahl in 1977, it concerns a wealthy, ineffectual man by the name of Henry (Benedict Cumberbatch). He discovers a notebook, written by a Dr Chatterjee (Dev Patel), that details his encounter with Imdad Khan (Ben Kingsley), otherwise known as “The Man Who Could See Without Using His Eyes”. Many believe that Dahl wrote the story as a gentle rebuke to the critics who would chastise his macabre and cynical inclinations – Henry, at first, covets Khan’s powers in order to improve his hand at cards. Yet, his greed isn’t punished but absolved by a greater purpose.
