Wes Anderson, who has been nominated across numerous categories for five of his previous films, finally went on to win his first Oscar at the 96th Academy Awards. He bagged the award for Best Live-Action Short Film for his directorial The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Unfortunately, the filmmaker was not at the award ceremony to collect his trophy.

Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) was nominated in 9 categories at the Oscars that year, and won four awards including, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score and Best Production Design. However, Anderson did not receive an award for the film, nor did he receive it for other nominated works such as The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Isle of Dogs.

The other nominees in the Best Live-Action Short Film category were Misan Harriman and Nicky Bentham for The After, Vincent René-Lortie and Samuel Caron for Invincible, Lasse Lyskjær Noer and Christian Norlyk for Knight of Fortune and Nazrin Choudhury and Sara McFarlane for Red, White and Blue.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Dev Patel, is an adaptation of Roald Dahl's eponymous short story. Along with this film, Anderson also adapted three other Dahl stories for Netflix, namely, The Swan, The Ratcatcher and Poison.