David Lynch's unrealized projects

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The following is a list of unproduced David Lynch projects in roughly chronological order. During his career, American film director David Lynch has worked on a number of projects that never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of them fell into development hell and others were officially canceled.^[1][2]

Before starting work on Eraserhead, Lynch worked on a script titled Gardenback, based on his painting of a hunched figure with vegetation growing from its back. Gardenback was a surrealist script about adultery, featuring a continually growing insect that represented one man's lust for his neighbor. He presented the script to the AFI, but they rejected it, as they felt the planned 45-minute runtime was too long for such a figurative, nonlinear script.^[3][4]

While working with Catherine E. Coulson on the prolonged production of Eraserhead, Lynch had an idea for a half-hour television show with the actress to be called I'll Test My Log with Every Branch of Knowledge. The series would have been about a middle-aged woman who took a log to various dentists, doctors, and physicians, each of whom talked about it, with the audience learning about its origins. Lynch later realized the character of the "Log Lady" in Twin Peaks, played by Coulson.^[5][6]

After Eraserhead's success,^[7] Lynch focused on the screenplay of his second film, Ronnie Rocket, which he also wanted to direct. The film's plot would have told the story of a detective seeking to enter a mysterious second dimension, aided by his ability to stand on one leg. He is obstructed on this quest by a strange landscape of odd rooms and a threatening train while being stalked by the "Donut Men", who wield electricity as a weapon. In addition to the detective's story, the film was to show the tale of Ronald d'Arte, a teenage dwarf, who suffers a surgical mishap that leaves him dependent on being plugged into an electrical supply at regular intervals; this dependence grants him an affinity with electricity, which he can use to produce music or cause destruction. The boy names himself Ronnie Rocket and becomes a rock star, befriending a tap-dancer named Electra-Cute. Michael J. Anderson and Dexter Fletcher were attached to the lead role at different times.^[8] The project never materialized due to financial conflicts,^[9] so Lynch left the production and directed The Elephant Man instead. Anderson later worked with Lynch in Twin Peaks.

At some point in the 1980s, Lynch adapted Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis into a feature film screenplay. The project never came to fruition due to concerns about the cost of realizing Lynch's vision of the insect the story's protagonist transforms into and also Lynch's eventual reluctance to adapt the novella, saying it was "better left as a book".^[10]

After The Elephant Man, Lynch read a screenplay by Alan Greenberg based on the life of blues musician Robert Johnson, and he has mentioned wanting to direct a film of the screenplay in the decades since.^[11] As of 2012, Lynch was trying to produce and direct the film with French financing.^[12] In 2013, Lynch said:

I'm a 30-year fan of the screenplay Alan Greenberg wrote for Love in Vain. I would very much like to direct it someday. But a number of things would have to fall in place before that would occur.^[11]

In 2018, according to Vulture, Lynch was still attempting to raise funds to realize the film.^[13]

Lynch had planned to follow his adaptation of Dune with the sequel Dune Messiah, based on the eponymous novel.^[1][2] According to Lynch, he was more than halfway done with the script when he heard that it was not going to get the green light:

I was really getting into Dune II. I wrote about half the script, maybe more, and I was really getting excited about it. It was much tighter, a better story.^[14]

After the completion of Blue Velvet, Lynch gave his editor Duwayne Dunham the script for a film he wrote called The Happy Worker, wanting him to direct it. It was based on a stage play by S. E. Feinberg.^[15] According to Bobcat Goldthwait, whom Lynch had approached to play the lead role, the film centers on a bunch of people who are digging a hole, and when one man questions why, he gets promoted to management. Afterward, "everybody resents him and his whole life goes to hell and then at the end of the movie he starts digging his own hole." Lynch apparently began scouting locations and found a "giant hole in Mexico that he liked" and wanted to use for the production.^[16] The project was developed over three decades.^[15] By 2018, it was reported that The Happy Worker had finally began production in Utah with a cast including Josh Whitehouse, Thomas Haden Church, and Colm Meaney.^[17][18] To this day, the film is awaiting release. Lynch's script was not used, but he is credited as an executive producer.^[19]

Following Blue Velvet, Lynch briefly developed a film version of Thomas Harris's Red Dragon for Dino De Laurentiis, but decided to drop the project, citing distaste for working on another major studio film, which he said has "no redeeming qualities". The film was eventually made and titled Manhunter, released in 1986.^[14]

In 1987, after the success of Blue Velvet, a Warner Bros. executive hired Lynch to direct a film based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, based on Anthony Summers's best-selling book Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Lynch met with Summers and co-wrote the script with Mark Frost, the first of their many collaborations. The film would have revolved around the last few months of Monroe's life before her supposed assassination by Bobby Kennedy. The studio bailed out of the project for political reasons.^[1][14]

On May 20, 1987, Lynch and Frost finished a script for a film project called One Saliva Bubble.^[20][21] Its plot centered around the small town of Newtonville, Kansas, where a secret government project goes amok when a guard's tiny saliva bubble shoots out of his mouth and into a weapons system, setting off a chain reaction that discombobulates the entire town when the residents begin to switch identities with one another,^[22][23] causing "all kind of wacko hell [to break] loose", as Lynch said. "Cliches one end to the other."^[14] Steve Martin was attached to star in the lead role, though Martin Short was also rumored to take that part. In the chapter "Marty Throws A Party Just To Sing" of his 2014 autobiography, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend, Short wrote,

We bought the house on the basis of the income I was about to make from two pending movies. You can guess what happened next. Practically the second we signed the mortgage, one of the two movies, a David Lynch film with Steve Martin entitled One Saliva Bubble fell through.^[24]

Lynch said he had intended to direct the film through Dino De Laurentiis, who was facing bankruptcy at the time:

We had all our scouts, had it cast, was right there ready to go. Dino kept delaying it, delaying it, delaying it. It became obvious it wasn't going to happen: there wasn't any money. Shortly thereafter his company went bankrupt. We saw the writing on the wall.^[14]

De Laurentiis's rights to the project inhibited Lynch from setting it up at another studio.^[14]

Up At the Lake was one of the three projects, along with Venus Descending and One Saliva Bubble, that Lynch pitched to De Laurentiis before his business went under.^[25] The film was to be a mystery, but no script was written.^[1][2]

In the late 1980s, Lynch mooted a film adaptation of Eric Knight's 1938 mystery novel You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up. The story follows a man dealing with luck, death, and irony. Lynch can be seen working on the script for the film in the 1989 documentary Don't Look at Me, but he dropped it before its completion.^[1][2]

Before making Twin Peaks, Lynch and Frost pitched a television series they called The Lemurians, based on the story of the lost continent of Lemuria, which sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.^[14][1][2] It would have featured "a lot of poems" and "detectives tracking extraterrestrials", among other things.^[14] NBC turned them down.^[1][14]

Around 1990, Lynch expressed interest in directing a new screen adaptation of D. M. Thomas's The White Hotel, with a screenplay by Dennis Potter. Before Lynch's involvement, filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci and Terrence Malick were associated with the project. Lynch intended to cast his then-girlfriend Isabella Rossellini in the main role. After they broke up, plans were scrapped.^[26]

During the filming of Twin Peaks in the 1990s, Lynch at one point considered releasing a spin-off film of the series film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me centered around the character Audrey Horne. Sherilyn Fenn was attached to reprise her role. The project was not ultimately made, but elements of the story later inspired Lynch's film Mulholland Drive.^[27]

Before the release of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lynch planned to release a sequel to it as a continuation of the series after its cancellation. He also planned a third film. These plans were scrapped after the bad reception of Fire Walk with Me.^[28]

After the successes of Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks, Lynch was approached to direct a live action film adaptation of the Japanese manga Domu: A Child's Dream. The project was set to be financed by Bandai Namco Pictures, based in Japan. Creator Katsuhiro Otomo agreed to relinquish the right to produce the adaptation on the basis of a treatment by Nilo Rodis-Jamero. The project began to collapse when Lynch and Rodis-Jamero brought it to Propaganda Films, which was more interested in striking a deal with Bandai than in making the film.^[29]

Around 1994, Lynch and Twin Peaks writer Robert Engels co-wrote a script called Dream of the Bovine. Engels said it was about "three guys, who used to be cows, living in Van Nuys and trying to assimilate their lives." Harry Dean Stanton was attached to star and he and Lynch tried to convince Marlon Brando to co-star, but Brando was not interested, calling the script "pretentious bullshit".^[30]

In 1995, the Gaumont Film Company approached Lynch to make a film based on the character Fantômas. Lynch recruited Michael Almereyda to rewrite his initial version before choosing to pursue a different project: Lost Highway.^[22]

The Edward R. Pressman Film Corp. optioned the film rights to Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder the year of its publication.^[31] Lynch had been fascinated by the case for years.^[32] He was sent a copy of the book in 1997^[32] and had briefly been involved to direct a film of the story, but hated the script that Alessandro Camon came up with, which was written by his then-girlfriend.^[31]

In 1998, Lynch initially conceived Mulholland Drive as a 90-minute pilot produced by Touchstone Television, intended to be picked up for a series by ABC. During the filming of the pilot, ABC decided to not pick up the series.^[33] Lynch then reworked the pilot as a feature film, which was released in 2001.

In 1998, Synergy Interactive, a Japanese video game production company, announced that it was developing a computer game called Woodcutters from Fiery Ships, designed primarily by Lynch. Lynch was impressed with its earlier game Gadget: Invention, Travel, & Adventure, which he said "delivered an immersive experience to the user". He described the plot of Woodcutters as follows:

Certain events have happened in a bungalow which is behind another in Los Angeles. And then suddenly the woodcutters arrive and they take the man who we think has witnessed these events, and their ship is... uh, silver, like a '30s kind of ship, and the fuel is logs. And they smoke pipes.

The game was canceled in November 1999 due to concerns that its "conundrum"–like story would be uninteresting to computer game players.^[34]

Sometime in the 2000s, Lynch began working with writer Caroline Thompson on a script for an animated fairy tale project titled Snootworld. In 2024, it was reported that he was seeking financial backing after Netflix had rejected his pitch. "Old-fashioned fairy tales are considered groaners", Lynch said. "Apparently people don't want to see them. It's a different world now and it's easier to say no than to say yes." He remained undecided as to whether he would direct (as well as produce and co-write) Snootworld, but was enthusiastic about his daughter Jennifer taking it on instead.^[35]

In 2010, Lynch wrote his first film since Inland Empire, titled Antelope Don't Run No More. The film is said to be set in Los Angeles and features "space aliens, talking animals, and a beleaguered musician named Pinky." Lynch was unable to secure financing for the project. There was some speculation that Lynch would be making the film with Netflix.^[36] In 2024, Lynch announced that he could no longer direct projects in person due to emphysema, but expressed hope that his screenplay for Antelope Don't Run No More would be picked up.^[37]

As early as February 2020, rumors began circulating that Lynch was in the process of casting an upcoming limited series based at Netflix.^[38][39] In March, a casting note resurfaced that said the new project's lead would be an "actress with dark hair in their mid to late 20s" and that the role would require "tasteful nudity".^[40] In September, Lynch said in an interview that the COVID-19 pandemic had put plans for a new project on hold.^[41][42] In November, it was announced that Lynch was working on a new project for Netflix under the working titles Wisteria and Unrecorded Night, via an issue of Production Weekly. He was set to write and direct 13 episodes with an $85 million budget, with Sabrina S. Sutherland listed as a producer. Also listed was a director of photography, Peter Deming. Production was set to begin in May 2021 at the Calvert Studios in Los Angeles.^{[43][38][39][44]} Subsequently, frequent Lynch collaborators Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern dropped hints that a new project was in the works. On March 31, 2021, MacLachlan posted a cryptic photo of some flowers on Instagram, which he tagged #wisteria.^[45] Two months later, Dern said in an interview that "fans should expect more and more radical, boundaryless art from David Lynch".^[46] By September, an unknown insider announced that the project had been either abandoned or postponed, with no reason given.^[47][48] In November, Deming said he was attached to the project but that it had been shut down due to the lockdowns before he could start work on it.^[49][50] In 2022, another rumor circulated that Lynch would premiere a new film at Cannes, possibly featuring Dern and Naomi Watts;^[51] Lynch quickly denied this.^[52] In 2024, Sutherland confirmed that Netflix had effectively scrapped the series:

Unrecorded Night was a non-Twin Peaks series that was going to shoot at Netflix but was canceled when the pandemic hit. There's always a chance we can pick it up again [...] we were in Pre-production and close to shooting.^[53][54][55]

She also said that Wisteria was a code name given by Netflix for "purposes of secrecy only", and that the show was really titled Unrecorded Night.^[56]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2024)

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• David Lynch filmography

• McKenna, Kristine; Lynch, David (2018). Room to Dream. Canongate Books. ISBN 9781782118404.
• Olson, Greg (2008). Beautiful Dark (illustrated ed.). Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810859173.
• Rodley, Chris; Lynch, David (2005). Lynch on Lynch (2nd ed.). Macmillan. ISBN 0571220185.

• David Lynch's unrealized projects at IMDb