With “Asteroid City” starting its limited theatrical release this weekend before going wide on June 23, Wes Anderson looks ahead to upcoming projects. And while he already has another projected line up he wants to shoot this Fall, before that comes “The Wonderful Life Of Henry Sugar.” The filmmaker’s Roald Dahl adaptation with Netflix is already in the can, but Variety reports (via IndieWire) that it’s less a feature film than a glorified short. In fact, according to Anderson, “Henry Sugar” is only 37 minutes long.
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Anderson opened up about his first collaboration with Netflix (and his second Dahl adaptation, after 2009’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox“) and abotu how it came to fruition. “In my case, it’s a little bit of a weird thing,” Anderson said about his work on “Henry Sugar.” “I knew Roald Dahl since before we made ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox.’ I met Lindsay Dahl, his widow, when we were shooting “The Royal Tenenbaums” like 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. But by the time I was ready to do it, the Dahl family no longer had the rights at all. They had sold the whole deal to Netflix.”
So Anderson approached the streaming giant to work on the project together. “Suddenly, in essence, there was nowhere else you could do it since they own it,” the director continued. “But beyond it, because it’s a 37-minute movie, it was the perfect place to do it, because it’s not really a movie. You know they used to do these BBC things called “Play for Today’” directed by people like Steven Frears and John Schlesinger and Alan Clarke. They were one-hour programs or even less. I kind of envisioned something like that.”
With “Henry Sugar” clocking in under forty minutes, that makes the project similar to Anderson’s 2007 short “Hotel Chevelier” with Jason Scwartzman and Natalie Portman. Granted, that film was only 13 minutes, and served as a prologue to “The Darjeeling Limited.” “Henry Sugar” is a little more robust than that, but only a little. The Netflix film stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, and Ben Kingsley, and adapts Dahl’s 1977 collection of seven short stories.  
While Anderson likes that he finally got to make “Henry Sugar,” he doesn’t think he’ll work in their format again very often. He prefers releasing his films in the theater over streaming. “It’s not quite the choice between a full-fledged cinema release and a streaming release because you would never distribute a short film like that and distribute it in cinemas,” said the filmmaker about his next film’s release. “They’d have to sell cheaper tickets or do a double feature… I had only a good experience with Netflix, but I’m very happy to be putting “Asteroid City” in cinemas.  Focus and Universal are doing it the real cinema way. That’s the way I really want my movies to be shown.”
As noted earlier, “Asteroid City” opens wide next weekend after it hits theaters in NYC and LA today.