While studios go head-to-head with various tentpoles this season, let’s be honest: the summer belongs to David Lynch. Starting in just a few weeks and leading all the way up to early September, we’ll be getting newly directed material from him in 18 separate doses on TV. If you ask him though, he sees the new season of Twin Peaks as an 18-hour film. According to a new interview, it’ll have to do as we won’t be getting an actual feature film from him ever again.
“Things changed a lot. So many films were not doing well at the box office even though they might have been great films and the things that were doing well at the box office weren’t the things that I would want to do,” a seemingly discouraged Lynch tells Sydney Morning Herald. When asked directly if Inland Empire will be the last feature he’ll ever make, he responded, “Yes it is.”
The film, released in 2006, stars Laura Dern as an actress who is mounting a major role, but begins to enter a nightmare as she inhabits her characters. Shot entirely on standard definition digital cameras, the relatively small-scale production picked up around $4 million, but considering how much we imagine Showtime handsomely paid Lynch for another round of Twin Peaks, we can’t entirely fault him for not being keen to make another film. However, if he were to launch a Kickstarter, we imagine he’d exceed his goal — by a lot. While this latest statement from the director is indeed disappointing (even moreso that we’ll never get another amazing Oscar campaign by him — see below), at least there is 18 hours of Lynch-directed material right around the corner.
