First Look: Wes Anderson’s 39-Minute ‘Henry Sugar’

Today, Venice released a first look at Wes Anderson’s latest, the short “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” which is expected to premiere out of competition on the Lido.

Venice lists ‘Henry Sugar’ as having a runtime of only 39 minutes. It’s supposed to be part of an anthology film with a cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, and Dev Patel.

Here’s Anderson explaining the film’s format, more thoroughly, to The Daily Beast:

“That’s not quite a movie. I did some Roald Dahl short story adaptations. They’re separate from each other; they’re not one thing. But the first one is a longer one, about 36-38 minutes, and so it’s a whole story—it’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. We have Ralph [Fiennes] as Roald Dahl, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Dev Patel and Richard Ayoade and Ben Kingsley, who’s great. It’s kind of an unusual form for the storytelling that we do, because my way into it was that I realized that what I liked were his words. The way the stories are told in Roald Dahl’s words. Just turning it into a movie, you can lose his words, by and large. We decided not to lose his words. When you see it, you’ll see what I mean. We use the words.”

So, in essence, ‘Henry Sugar’ might be split into four different movies/episodes. The first one, the lengthiest, titled ‘Henry Sugar,’ is 39 minutes. That’s what I gathered from this. When you take into account that Netflix is going to be streaming it then it does make sense as to why Anderson wanted to team up with the streaming giant for this one.

Anderson has compared ‘ Henry Sugar’ to his short film “Hotel Chevalier,” made for Apple in 2007. The film is based on four short stories penned by author Roald Dahl and was shot on a stage in 16mm. There’s also stop motion animation. It does sound very different to previous Andersons.

Also, Fiennes plays author Roald Dahl, and he appears in all four of the shorts. The other actors pop up in various different roles throughout. We’ll get to know all the details for ourselves when “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar” shows up on Netflix in November.

The Venice Film Festival is set to begin on August 30. There is no premiere date set, just yet, for ‘Henry Sugar.’