Well, well, maybe David Lynch hasn’t “retired” from filmmaking after all. The iconic surreal filmmaker declared in 2017 that he would never make another film again, the same year his Showtime series, “Twin Peaks: The Return” aired. While the director seemed to change his tune vaguely over the years, hinting at a new project in 2020, since 2017, the filmmaker has not released anything significant ever since. And while there were false reports in 2022 that he had a new film ready at Cannes, those rumors were very fake. One element might’ve been confirmed, however. The director had been rumored to be cooking up some kind of project at Netflix over the years, and we finally may know what it is. However, Netflix isn’t making it.
In a new interview with Deadline, Lynch revealed that he did have a project in the works at the streaming giant. Called” Snootworld,” it’s an old, unmade animated project from years ago that Lynch evidently revived in secret (here’s a brief mention of it in a Daily Beast article from 2009). It’s a collaboration with screenwriter Caroline Thompson, writer of quirky fairytale-like projects including “The Corpse Bride,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Edward Scissorhands,” and the live-action feature film “The Addams Family.”
A film affectionally referred to a “wackdoo” fairytale story, apparently Netflix eventually passed on the project.
“I don’t know when I started thinking about Snoots, but I’d do these drawings of Snoots, and then a story started to emerge,” Lynch told Deadline in a rare interview about his unmade animated project. “I got together with Caroline, and we worked on a script. Just recently, I thought someone might be interested in getting behind this, so I presented it to Netflix in the last few months, but they rejected it.”
Given this was “in the last few months,” it’s unclear if this Netflix project was the one Lynch was rumored to be developing circa 2020.
Lynch acknowledged the uphill battle ‘Snootworld’ faces in the current animation landscape.
“‘Snootworld’ is kind of an old-fashioned story, and animation today is more about surface jokes,” he explained. “Old-fashioned fairytales are considered groaners: 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.”
This candid take still makes us curious about what could have been too far out there for Netflix, given they don’t always seem as discerning with other greenlights.
“It takes my breath away how wacky it is,” Thompson added, “The Snoots are these tiny creatures who have a ritual transition at age eight, at which time they get tinier, and they’re sent away for a year, so they are protected. The world goes into chaos when the Snoot hero of the story disappears into the carpet, and his family can’t find him, and he enters a crazy, magnificent world.”
Lynch and Thompson co-wrote “Snootworld” together, and the filmmaker is now seeking financial backers to help make it after the streaming giant has moved on. However, Lynch hasn’t decided if he’ll direct it, after telling Deadline in their interview that he had hoped that his daughter, Jennifer Lynch (“American Horror Story”), could potentially do it.
We’ll keep our fingers crossed that something materializes to push the project across the finish line, as more movies from Lynch, wackadoo or not, are completely fine with us.