In 1977, a young and still-unknown David Lynch released Eraserhead, his surreal black-and-white student film. His hypnotic and nightmarish feature debut revolves around the perpetually-stressed Henry (Jack Nance) as he navigates a decaying urban landscape, a failing marriage, and confronts his fears of being the father to his newborn mutant baby.
Made on a shoe-string budget over five years, Eraserhead introduced the world to a director brimming with ideas and vision to spare. In the time since, Lynch has become one of the most celebrated directors working not just in the horror genre, but the medium as a whole. His influence is wide and far-reaching, and he has carved out a subgenre all his own: "Lynchian" horror.
Despite his status in the industry, David Lynch still struggles to get projects funded and produced; his eccentric tastes and non-conventional leanings make him an unreliable bet in the casino that is Hollywood. Here are ten David Lynch projects that will never see the light of day.
10 Wisteria
In 2022, rumors began to circulate that David Lynch was premiering a top-secret film at the 75th Cannes Festival - his first movie since 2006’s Inland Empire. Not much was known about it other than it starred Laura Dern in some capacity, as well as a handful of other unnamed (but notable) Lynch regulars. It didn’t take long for internet sleuths to connect the dots between the mysterious Cannes project and Wisteria, the unconfirmed Netflix project that Lynch reportedly started work on in November 2020.
Of course, details about Wisteria are scarce; the only information we have is a publication in Production Weekly, an industry trade used to cast films. According to the description, the Netflix series would be 13 episodes and have a reported budget of $85 million. The scripts were registered under Lynch and Mark Frost’s production company, Twin Peak Productions, leading some to think the series was a continuation of the show. The truly dedicated fans even discovered a road in Odessa, Texas called Wisteria Street, which has a diner on it.
As of 2023, no new details have emerged. While it’s possible that Wisteria could still happen, the likelihood dwindles as the years pass. Fingers crossed this isn’t just a rumor.
Franz Kafka’s seminal novella The Metamorphosis tells the story of Gregor Samsa, an otherwise ordinary salesperson who wakes up one morning to find himself inexplicably transforming into an insect. The story is grotesque, brimming with metaphorical and surreal imagery, and darkly funny; in other words, the perfect material for David Lynch.
In the 1980s, he wrote a script and began pre-production, but quickly realized that doing the source material justice might be out of his reach. The budget required to bring The Metamorphosis to life would've been impossible to obtain, and Lynch felt that he was losing the spirit of the novella in the process. So to maintain the sanctity of Kafka’s novel, Lynch decided not to adapt it.
When interviewed in 2017 about it, Lynch remarked:
“Once I finished writing the script for a feature film adaptation I realized that Kafka’s beauty is in his words. That story is so full of words that when I was finished writing I realized it was better on paper than it could ever be on film…”
8 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me Sequel
Twin Peaks was a truly one-of-a-kind show: Lynch managed to bridge the gap between surrealist art and pop melodrama to create a bona fide phenomenon. But the groundbreaking show was still on network television, and Lynch’s vision began to be diluted by studio notes and censorship. Following a divisive second season, Twin Peaks came to an end. But Lynch wasn’t ready to leave that world yet.
In 1992, Lynch released Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, the first prequel film in a proposed series that would explore the mythology of the mysterious Black Lodge. Unrestricted by television censorship, Lynch was able to really go wild. However, the film’s brutal violence - especially towards women - was a major turn-off for both critics and audiences, and the film was a box office bomb.
Unfortunately, the film’s failure made Lynch abandon any plans for more sequels (until The Return, that is). Thankfully, the film has been critically re-appraised in recent years, and is widely considered among the director’s best works.
7 Venus Descending
In the late 1980s, long before Andrew Dominik’s hugely-controversial Blonde took the world by storm, David Lynch was planning his own fictional biopic of Marilyn Monroe: Venus Descending. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, the film was not - and will probably never be - made.
Working alongside his longtime collaborator Mark Frost, Lynch attempted to adapt Anthony Summer’s book Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. While the novel stuck to the facts, Lynch wanted to go off the deep end. According to Indiewire, the film would have played fast and loose with the facts, and changed her name to "Rosilyn Ramsey" to avoid legal issues. It was even rumored to end with Ramsey being assassinated by a fictionalized version of Bobby Kennedy.
6 Antelope Don’t Run No More
Details regarding Antelope Don’t Run No More are few and far between. In fact, it wasn’t until Lynch briefly discussed it in his 2010 memoir Room to Dream did people actually learn of it.
Set in Los Angeles, Antelope was envisioned to be a spiritual sequel to Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. Lynch mentioned that it would’ve centered around a musician by the name of Pinky and extraterrestrial visitation. Oh, and animals that can speak.
While an alien movie from the mind of David Lynch sounds absolutely divine, unfortunately Antelope Don’t Run No More will never see the light of day.
5 Dream of the Bovine
Before he released Fire Walk with Me, David Lynch tried to get Dream of the Bovine off the ground, a project that sounded strange even by Lynch’s standards.
According to Far Out Magazine, Lynch teamed up with Mark Engels to make what he called “a really dumb, really stupid, meant-to-be-pitifully-bad-quality budget thing.” Bovine was described by Engels as an absurd comedy about “three guys, who used to be cows, living in Van Nuys and trying to assimilate their lives.” Rumors circulated that the story was actually to be set in Paris circa 1911 and shot entirely in black and white, but this was never confirmed by Lynch or Engels.
Lynch convinced his friend and frequent collaborator Harry Dean Stanton to join the project, and the two took it to, of all people, Marlon Brando. Lynch comically recalled the actor’s reaction to the pitch in his book, Room to Dream:
“Harry Dean and I went up to talk to Marlon Brando about the two of them doing it together, but Brando hated it. He looked at [us] and said, ‘It’s pretentious bulls**t,’ and he started telling us about these cookies made out of grass that grows in salt water that he wanted to promote."
4 Gardenback
In 1970, David Lynch moved to Los Angeles to study filmmaking at the American Film Institute. Around that time he began working on the script for a surreal horror film called Gardenback. Details are scant, but the (very Lynchian) plot centered around a man growing a garden on his back, and the insect that lived in it.
In an interview taken from Chris Rodley’s 1997 book Lynch on Lynch, the surrealist director had this to say of Gardenback:
"My first year at the Center was spent rewriting a forty-five-page script I wrote called Gardenback. The whole thing unfolded from this painting I’d done. The script had a story, in my mind, and it had what some people could call a 'monster' in it. When you look at a girl, something crosses from her to you. And in this story, that something is an insect.
The financiers thought Lynch was crazy: he had presented them with a 45-page outline with no dialogue, conventional story, or significant character development. They told him he needed to totally overhaul the script, and Lynch reluctantly listened.
By the end of his first year, Lynch had a finished script. But in his own words, he considered it “pretty much worthless” He felt his vision had been watered down, and refused to make what he considered an inferior movie. But luckily Lynch had another idea he could fall back on: a 21-page script that would eventually become Eraserhead.
3 Untitled Audrey Horne Spinoff
Following the cancellation of Twin Peaks in 1991, Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost had the idea to develop a spin-off show featuring Audrey Horne. Their idea would see Horne moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in Hollywood. According to Frost, the show was envisioned as a modern noir.
While nothing moved beyond the pitch stage, Lynch did retool the idea and axed the connection to Twin Peaks, using the seed of Audrey Horne spin-off show to write the script for his now-classic film, Mulholland Drive.
2 One Saliva Bubble
After the success of Blue Velvet, Lynch would work with Mark Frost to draft the script for a “feel-good slapstick comedy” called One Saliva Bubble.
The film's plot centered around the small town of Newtonville, Kansas, where a deadly virus has escaped a top-secret government facility via the saliva bubble of an infected security guard. The virus causes a number of townsfolk to shift identities with one another, leading to some comically surreal misadventures.
Both Steve Martin and Martin Short were set to lead the film, but for unknown reasons, the project never came to fruition, and probably never will. However, the "Dougie" storyline in Twin Peaks: The Return features a lot of similarities to the axed project.
1 Ronnie Rocket
After the release of Eraserhead, Lynch wanted to capitalize on his newfound cult success to make another equally-bizarre feature that he called Ronnie Rocket: The Absurd Myster of the Strange Forces of Existence.
According to an early draft that leaked online, Ronnie Rocket centered around Ronald d’Arte (rumored to be played by "The Man From Another Place" actor Michael J. Anderson), a three-foot tall teenager who gains the ability to control electricity after a surgical mishap. He uses his newfound power to produce music under the name “Ronnie Rocket” and becomes a rock star. There’s also a seemingly disconnected tale concerning a detective stuck on a mysterious train filled with odd rooms. He’s looking for the entrance to “the second dimension,” while being pursued by “Donut Men,” who also have the power to control electricity.
Even by Lynch’s standards, Ronnie Rocket was too strange for producers to take a gamble on. Lynch then shifted to directing an existing screenplay that he could lend his unique touch to: The Elephant Man. In the years since, Lynch has since toyed with bringing Ronnie Rocket to life; Mel Brooks and Francis Ford Coppola have even offered to lend a hand in producing the movie. But Lynch has since moved on, and the project is probably all but dead.
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