
In his fifty-year career, the American director has only made 10 films. In recent years, his projects have all fallen through.
Of course, there was Twin Peaks: The Return, the hit series of 2017. But since Inland Empire in 2006, with Laura Dern and Jeremy Irons, there has been no new film. At the time of his death, on January 16, 2025, David Lynch had not made a film for 20 years!
He hasn’t done anything either. In recent years, the director has dabbled in all the arts. He’s tried his hand at a few arty shorts like The Mystery of the Seeing Hand (2020). He produced Giga Agladz’s The Other Me (2022). He made the music video for singer Chrystabell’s “Sublime Eternal Love” (2024). He gave his voice to the animated series Robot Chicken. He even made a cameo as John Ford in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans (2022). But no new feature film has come to fruition. And it’s not for lack of trying.


Snootworld
Written twenty years ago, with the author Caroline Thompson (who wrote the scripts for Corpse Bride and Edward Scissorhands ), this feature film could have marked David Lynch’s first steps in the world of animation. The filmmaker tried to get produced by Netflix. But it didn’t work out. “I don’t know when I started thinking about Snoots, but I was doing these drawings of Snoots and then a story started to emerge.
I got together with Caroline and we worked on a script. Just recently, I thought someone might be interested in supporting this project. I presented it to Netflix but they rejected it,” he said last year. In the process, he confided that his Snootworld was a more ” old-fashioned ” concept than most modern animated films, making it harder to sell to studios. He had also hoped to pass the torch to his daughter, but she preferred to decline. Maybe Jennifer Lynch will want to take it on now, to make her father’s dream come true.

Antelope Don’t Run No More
In his 2018 memoir, Room to Dream, the director revealed that he wrote the film, which blended elements of Inland Empire and Mulholland Drive mythology. A synopsis of the script called it a ” narrative fantasy involving aliens, talking animals, and a beleaguered musician named Pinky.” A great script, if those who’ve read it are to be believed. But in 2024, he was diagnosed with emphysema and announced that he wasn’t able to complete the project at the moment.
Unrecorded Night
David Lynch’s hottest project of the past few years has been Unrecorded Night (working title), a non-Twin Peaks series that was set to be shot for Netflix but was canceled due to the pandemic. In September 2020, as casting was underway, Lynch said in an interview that the COVID-19 pandemic had shelved the project, which he was set to write and direct for 13 episodes on an $85 million budget. Sabrina S. Sutherland was set to produce.
A cinematographer, Peter Deming, was also on board. Production was set to begin in May 2021 at Calvert Studios in Los Angeles. But it was shut down due to the lockdown. And in 2024, Sutherland confirmed that Netflix had finally dropped out.

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