Wes Anderson's next Roald Dahl adaptation for Netflix is only 37 minutes long

Wes Anderson returns to cinemas this month with Asteroid City, the first of two films the acclaimed director will release this year. His second is a Roald Dahl adaptation, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, due out on Netflix in a few months.

How was such a precise filmmaker able to pull off two films in a single year? Well, as Anderson explained in a new interview with IndieWire, it helps that The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is only 37 minutes long.

Taylor Hill/FilmMagic Wes Anderson at the New York premiere of 'Asteroid City'

"It's not a feature film," Anderson said. "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."

Anderson continued, "Suddenly, in essence, there was nowhere else you could do it since they own it. 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."

Anderson previously adapted Dahl with the 2009 stop-motion masterpiece Fantastic Mr. Fox. His relationship with the late author's estate goes back years, and Anderson said he "had this [story] waiting for me." But it took him some time to figure out his approach. The final product sounds similar to Hotel Chevalier, the 2007 short film Anderson made for Apple as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited.

The short length of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar explains why Anderson is working with Netflix when he is otherwise such a fierce defender of the theatrical experience.

"[What] I will say is that while I had only a good experience with Netflix, [I'm] very happy to be putting Asteroid City in cinemas," Anderson told IndieWire. "Focus and Universal are doing it the real cinema way. That's the way I really want my movies to be shown."

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar will star Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character, and will also feature Ralph Fiennes (marking his first reunion with Anderson since The Grand Budapest Hotel), Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Rupert Friend, and Richard Ayoade.

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