Last September, Netflix struck a massive deal to acquire the Roald Dahl Story Company. Before too long, the streamer will start pushing Dahl adaptations on its audience like Disney remaking its animated classics in live-action. First up is a movie version of Tim Minchin’s Matilda the Musical, starring Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull and Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey, which will arrive on December 2 (in theaters in the UK and Ireland and on Netflix’s stream-waves in the U.S., Canada, and Australia). After that, the sky is the limit for the Dahl cinematic universe. There are dozens of books to choose from and plenty of kooky characters and surreal settings to translate into a visual medium.
Dahl was a wildly imaginative writer who conjured up unbelievable worlds on the page. Those worlds need equally imaginative filmmakers to bring them to life on-screen (even on the smaller screens of the streaming-sphere). Fortunately, Netflix has got the right idea. So far, they’ve tapped two of the quirkiest, most inventive directors in Hollywood to adapt their newly acquired Dahl stories: Wes Anderson is on board to direct an adaptation of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, and Taika Waititi is working on not one, but two animated series set in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory universe.
Amongst a boatload of other upcoming projects – a Flash Gordon reboot, a Star Wars movie, a live-action version of Akira, an adaptation of The Incal, the list goes on (they may not all materialize) – Waititi will write, direct, and executive produce two Wonka-verse cartoons for Netflix. One animated series will adapt the story arc of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, while the other will focus on the lives of Oompa Loompas. Whether or not Waititi intends to play Willy Wonka himself has yet to be announced, but that would be pretty awesome. Waititi has never adapted Dahl’s work before, but he did include a fun nod to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (the Gene Wilder movie) in Thor: Ragnarok when the God of Thunder is ushered through a trippy, terrifying tunnel. A few bars of “Pure Imagination” can even be heard on the soundtrack.
Anderson, on the other hand, is no stranger to adapting the works of Dahl. His first animated feature was a stop-motion adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox. Acclaimed by fans and critics alike, Fantastic Mr. Fox has so much quirk and visual flair that it feels like a glimpse into the minds of both Dahl and Anderson – and it also has plenty of heart. It might be a cartoon about talking animals, but Fantastic Mr. Fox is a deep dive into the ups and downs of a marriage filled with broken promises. Anderson has already proven that his filmmaking style pairs perfectly with Dahl’s storytelling.
The director signed on to helm Henry Sugar for Netflix after wrapping his latest ensemble tragicomedy, Asteroid City. The movie is set to star Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, and Ralph Fiennes, who previously gave one of his best performances in Anderson’s magnum opus, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Unlike Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is a traditional novel telling a singular story, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More is a short story collection comprised of several stories. Anderson could either adapt the titular story on its own or collect them all in an anthology similar to his last film, The French Dispatch. Either way, Anderson surely has something visually stunning and delightfully offbeat in store for Dahl fans.
Pure Imagination
Ultimately, what makes Waititi and Anderson the perfect directors to visualize Dahl’s work is their own “pure imagination.” Waititi boarded a blockbuster franchise with an even more rigid formula than the James Bond movies and managed to subvert expectations at every turn. He made a mockumentary about the daily lives of vampires, a classic adventure story about a dysfunctional father-son dynamic, and a coming-of-age comedy about a Hitler Youth cadet whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler. Anderson, meanwhile, has cooked up such wonderfully oddball stories as a hotel concierge being framed for murder in Eastern Europe, an oceanographer hunting down a “jaguar shark” to avenge his best friend, and a pack of dogs sharing an island with piles of trash in a dystopian near-future.
Both directors’ movies are jam-packed with dry humor, vibrant colors, and idiosyncratic quirks. Throughout their respective careers, they’ve captured the tone that makes Dahl’s books resonate across so many cultures and generations. The comedy is fun and lighthearted, but the tragedy is all too real. The filmmaker behind Fantastic Mr. Fox already has a proven track record as a perfect cinematic conduit for Dahl’s writing, and it’s only a matter of time before the filmmaker behind Jojo Rabbit and Hunt for the Wilderpeople has a similar track record.