Despite “Asteroid City” receiving mixed-to-positive reviews, it appears Wes Anderson still has a ton of fans out there excitedly rushing to theaters to see his work, with the film earning a really solid opening weekend box office. However, while “Asteroid City” has only just hit theaters, all eyes are on what he has next, a new Netflix film, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” which is expected to arrive later this year. If you’re a fan of Anderson’s work, then you definitely should be interested in watching ‘Henry Sugar,’ as it appears the filmmaker is attempting to do something truly unique with the upcoming anthology feature.
In a recent interview with the French magazine, Les Cahiers du Cinéma, Wes Anderson was asked about his upcoming film, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.” Recently, during the publicity run for “Asteroid City,” the filmmaker has been asked quite a bit about his next film, revealing that he’s adopting an anthology structure, similar to his own “The French Dispatch,” but ‘Henry Sugar,’ which is said to include multiple adaptations of Roald Dahl stories, will differ in one major way—the narrative device linking everything together.
“I don’t even know if you can call it a feature film. It has the same duration, but these are four different stories,” explained Anderson. “In ‘The French Dispatch,’ the stories were designed to form one film, here they are completely separate. The only connection is that they are stories by Roald Dahl and he appears in all four parts as a character played by Ralph Fiennes. It’s made with a narrative method that, to my knowledge, does not exist in any other film. I’m not going to explain it to you, you’ll understand when you see the result!”
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Previously, Anderson revealed that the actual ‘Henry Sugar’ adaptation within the larger film is under 40 minutes. The rest of the stories will be much shorter. And it’s clear the anthology stories will be disparate, with no obvious link between them. But it’s curious to imagine how Ralph Fiennes’ version of Dahl will factor into things. You have to assume it’s more than just a narration over the stories. We’ll just have to wait and see what tricks Anderson has up his sleeve.
No official release date has been set for “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.” The film has been teased by Netflix as having a late-2023 release date, which would make sense. We know Anderson’s films often find themselves in the awards discussion. So, Netflix would be silly to not consider an awards season release for the film. Though, it will be interesting—if ‘Henry Sugar’ does get a late-2023 release—how awards season will go for Anderson if he has two competing films.
In the meantime, you can catch “Asteroid City” in theaters now.