David Lynch's unrealized projects

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.

Gardenback
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.

I'll Test My Log with Every Branch of Knowledge
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.

Ronnie Rocket
After Eraserhead 's success, 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. The project never materialized due to financial conflicts, so Lynch left the production and directed The Elephant Man instead. Anderson later worked with Lynch in Twin Peaks.

The Metamorphosis
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".

Dune Messiah
Lynch had planned to follow his adaptation of Dune with the sequel Dune Messiah, based on the eponymous novel. 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."

Manhunter
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.

Venus Descending
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.

One Saliva Bubble
On May 20, 1987, Lynch and Frost finished a script for a film project called One Saliva Bubble. 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, causing "all kind of wacko hell [to break] loose", as Lynch said. "Cliches one end to the other." 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." 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." De Laurentiis's rights to the project inhibited Lynch from setting it up at another studio.

Up At the Lake
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. The film was to be a mystery, but no script was written.

You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up
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.

The Lemurians
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. It would have featured "a lot of poems" and "detectives tracking extraterrestrials", among other things. NBC turned them down.

The White Hotel
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.

Untitled Twin Peaks spin-off
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.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me sequels
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.

Domu: A Child's Dream
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.

Dream of the Bovine
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".

Fantomas
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.

Severed
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. Lynch had been fascinated by the case for years. He was sent a copy of the book in 1997 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.

Mulholland Drive TV series iteration
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. Lynch then reworked the pilot as a feature film, which was released in 2001.

Woodcutters from Fiery Ships video game
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.

Snootworld
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.

Antelope Don't Run No More
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.