Wes Anderson is returning to the world of Roald Dahl and it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect. The first trailer for “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” starring Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Sir Ben Kingsley and Richard Ayoade, has just debuted and you can watch it above.
“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” just debuted at the beginning of the month in Venice and will be on Netflix on Sept. 27. Comparing it to Anderson’s feature “Asteroid City” from earlier this year, our reviewer said the new film is “naked and vulnerable in all the ways this year’s previous effort was girded by walls of remove.”
The official synopsis says only this: “A beloved Roald Dahl short story about a rich man who learns about a guru who can see without using his eyes and then sets out to master the skill in order to cheat at gambling.”
Anderson, of course, previously adapted a Dahl story as the 2009 Oscar-nominated stop-motion bauble “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” And he’s got even more to go! As it turns out, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” is the first short in a suite of Dahl adaptations that will premiere on Netflix in the days after ”The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.”
There’s “The Swan” immediately following “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” on Sept. 28 (“A young adult Roald Dahl short story about a small/brilliant boy ruthlessly pursued by two large, idiotic bullies”); then “The Ratcatcher” on Sept. 29 (“A lesser-known Roald Dahl short story about a professional rodent exterminator”); and then the final short “Poison,” which will debut on Sept. 30 (“A well-known Roald Dahl short story about a man who discovers a poisonous snake asleep in his bed”).
Together, their run times equal a feature-length anthology but it’s unclear if they’ll ever be packaged that way.
But it all starts with “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” on Sept. 27 on Netflix.
