Thanks mostly to TikTok, Wes Anderson has become more meme than man these days, with the filmmaker understandably left nonplussed by his newfound viral flame. Not that it’s preventing him from indulging his bespoke form of stylized cinema, though, with The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar ticking all the boxes audiences have come to expect.
Having premiered at the Venice Film Festival to rave reviews and a perfect Rotten Tomatoes critical approval rating of 100 percent, Anderson proceeded to instantly raise the bar by confirming he’d only gone ahead and made another three short-form adaptations at the same time, as Netflix makes a fascinating fist of utilizing the Roald Dahl catalogue it had purchased at great expense.
The pressure is on for the other three to deliver, then, after it was additionally confirmed that once The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar premieres on Sept. 27, the remaining trio will be released on consecutive days. Technically there’s nowhere to go but down in terms of acclaim, but it’d be one for the history books were the entire quartet to land impeccable responses from the aggregation site.
The Swan, The Ratcatcher, and Poison will complete the quartet, with the revolving door of cast members involved in at least one of the four involving Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Rupert Friend, and Ben Kingsley. Even the images we’ve seen so far can best be described as “Andersonesque,” so you can fully expect the volume of parodies to continue increasing when Netflix dedicates the batter part of a week to rolling out the seven-time Academy Award nominee’s return to the world of Dahl.