There’s a big name in the Oscar race for Best Live Action Short. Quirky auteur Wes Anderson is nominated for directing the 37-minute-long “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” whose cast is led by another well-known star, Benedict Cumberbatch. Are they too big to fail? This is Anderson’s eighth nomination at the Oscars, but he’s still looking for his first win.
Anderson’s Oscar nominations span 22 years. He shared his first bid with Owen Wilson: Best Original Screenplay for “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001), which was the lone nomination for that film. Later he moved into stop-motion animation, earning a bid for Best Animated Feature for “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009), based on the children’s novel by Roald Dahl. That film received one additional bid for Alexandre Desplat‘s score, but the film lost both awards to Pixar’s “Up.” After that he and Roman Coppola picked up a Best Original Screenplay bid for “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012); again, the writing bid was the only recognition for that film.
He finally achieved an Oscar breakthrough with “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014), which achieved nine nominations, three of which went to Anderson: Best Picture, Best Director and, once again, Best Original Screenplay. Alas, despite the film winning four Oscars, none of those awards went to Anderson even though he had won writing prizes from the WGA and the BAFTAs. Nomination number-seven came for another stop-motion animated film, “Isle of Dogs” (2018), but this time the academy preferred “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Which brings us to “Henry Sugar,” Anderson’s first Oscar-nominated short film and his second foray into the world of Roald Dahl.
As of this writing “Henry Sugar” leads our predictions with odds of 31/10 based on the combined forecasts of Gold Derby users. Among those betting on it are a whopping 19 out of 20 Expert journalists we’ve surveyed from major media outlets. But be wary of predicting it just because Anderson is the biggest name in the category. True, the award for Best Live Action Short has gone to recognizable figures like Christine Lahti (“Lieberman in Love”) and Riz Ahmed (“The Long Goodbye”), but academy members who vote in this category have proved not to be star-struck. Last year Alfonso Cuaron was nommed for producing “Le Pupille,” but lost to “An Irish Goodbye.” Other familiar faces who have lost the award include Kenneth Branagh (1992’s “Swan Song”), Sean Astin (1994’s “Kangaroo Court “) and Jeff Goldblum (1995’s “Little Surprises”). And this year Pedro Almodovar was denied even a nomination for his short film “Strange Way of Life.”
That said, “Henry Sugar” was acclaimed by critics (85 on MetaCritic), so a win here wouldn’t simply come down to name recognition. But the fact that Anderson is now eight nominations deep without a win certainly doesn’t hurt his case.
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