Netflix to release Roald Dahl collection as a movie after Oscar win – out this week

While he couldn't be there collect it, Wes Anderson would have been celebrating from afar this weekend as his movie The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar won the Best Live Action Short Film Oscar. 

Remarkably it was the director's first win at the Academy Awards, and also the only win for Netflix at the 2024 awards (Maestro was up for several gongs but failed to win). Now, following the victory Netflix is wasting no time in stitching it together into a feature-length Roald Dahl movie, coming to the streaming service on the 15th of March and titled The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More

That's because it will be accompanied by the three other Dahl shorts (also directed by Anderson) that were released separately last year, bringing the total runtime to 88 minutes. 

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is the longest of the four films and follows the title character (Benedict Cumberbatch) in a Scrooge-like story where a selfish rich man decides to use his special powers he learnt from a guru (Sir Ben Kingsley) for good. It's a surprisingly sweet story that Dahl allegedly wrote to silence critics that his works always ended on a sad note. 

Never one to do things by the book, Anderson's adaptation resembles a play more than a movie with characters narrating directly to the camera and stagehands assembling and disassembling sets in front of our eyes. It's bizarre yes, but also brilliant. The three shorter films, The Swan, Ratcatcher and Poison also use this method. I'd say Poison is the best but the others are well worth a watch too. 

Across the four films, you'll see the same faces pop up as different characters. Forming almost a small theatre troop are Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes, Rupert Friend and Richard Ayoade. I'm happy to say all are excellent. 

Of course, you can just watch all of the shorts right now, but Netflix's decision to package them up into one film basically makes them into another anthology movie similar to Anderson's The French Dispatch.