Wes Anderson’s collection of shorts, developed exclusively for Netflix, has hit the streaming service. Consisting of screen adaptations of four short stories by Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, The Swan, Poison, and The Rat Catcher are garnering widespread audience attention, and the first of the four is being praised by critics.
This is not the first time the auteur has adapted a Dahl piece for film – Anderson wrote and directed 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, a Dahl book about a sly fox who just can’t seem to give up his criminal ways. And those five Dahl pieces are by no means the only works from his catalog to have been adapted to film – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, and The Witches have all been adapted to film, some of them more than once, and multiple Dahl projects have been adapted into musicals, too.
Few writers have been adapted to film as much as Dahl, and Anderson hasn’t adapted the works of any other writers. Though Dahl has a large body of work, there isn’t much left for Anderson to adapt to a feature film unless he gives his take on some of the aforementioned pieces. Anderson has proven he’s more than capable of writing his own scripts, but if he is to take on another classic author in the way he’s taken on Dahl, we have some suggestions for the director.
L. Frank Baum
Frank Baum, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the book that was adapted to screen as The Wizard of Oz, wrote several books set in the magical land. While we are staunchly against anyone remaking The Wizard of Oz, we would be all for Anderson’s spin on some other tales in Oz. Baum also wrote a number of Christmas stories, and we’d love to see Anderson’s take on the holidays.
Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll’s most famous pieces of work are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, which, of course, became the classic Disney film Alice in Wonderland. As Baum did with Oz, Carroll wrote several books that take place in Wonderland, so there’s plenty of material for Anderson to choose from without filming another reimagination of Alice in Wonderland. We have a feeling Anderson’s interpretation of Wonderland would be all sorts of weirdly and symmetrically wonderful.
Dr. Seuss
Many of Dr. Seuss’s works have already been adapted to film, but he wrote so much there are still a few good options left. Just imagine Anderson bringing The Butter Battle Book or If I Ran the Zoo to life. They’d be far different from The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Anderson’s other Dahl adaptations, but they’d be just as whimsical.
Wes Anderson’s four latest Roald Dahl adaptations are streaming now on Netflix.
