Deep in the morass of unmade David Lynch films––among the better-known likes Ronnie Rocket, One Saliva Bubble, Antelope Don’t Run No More, and Dune Messiah––is Snootworld, an animated, family-friendly project his ex-wife Peggy Reavey once claimed would be “David’s Harry Potter.” Some two decades since he began writing a script with Caroline Thompson (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands) and fifteen-or-so years since the last bit of speculation, Lynch has––in a somewhat uncharacteristic move––announced his hopes to find financing in an interview with Deadline.
This after, Lynch tells us, Netflix rejected a pitch for the feature, which Thompson revealed is the story of Snoots, “tiny creatures who have a ritual transition at aged eight at which time they get tinier and they’re sent away for a year so they are protected.” In yet another of his riffs on Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, chaos ensues “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.” Thompson scripted acts one and three of the film, while the middle––seemingly its most fantastical stretch––was penned by Lynch.
Who seems to think Netflix––with whom he’s long been rumored to do everything from Antelope to Wisteria / Unrecorded Night, the latter a possible Twin Peaks riff––rejected Snootworld for being “kind of an old fashioned story and animation today is more about surface jokes.” (Not a DreamWorks fan, then.) Just as the first episode of Twin Peaks‘ third season told us it’s a world of truck drivers, Lynch declared it’s “a different world now and it’s easier to say no than to say yes.” Hope nevertheless remains, though it’s uncertain whether he or another director will handle the material.
And as for other projects? Lynch was unequivocal: “I can’t talk about those things right now.”