Won’t somebody let David Lynch turn our world into Snootworld
David Lynch wants to make an animated movie called Snootworld, and someone should probably just let him
Aux News David Lynch
Photo: Ernesto S. Ruscio
Snootworld is in crisis. Don’t know what Snootworld is? Neither do we! At this rate, we’ll never know because America’s favorite weatherman, David Lynch, says Netflix passed on the project.
Snootworld is one of those unrealized Lynch projects, like One Saliva Bubble and Ronnie Rocket, that the director has been hyping for decades. The fansite Lynchnet mentions that the Eraserhead helmer discussed a script for “an animated film for children called Snootworld” in December of 2003. Twenty years on, our world continues its current Snoot-less state unabated.
Speaking to Deadline, Lynch says Netflix recently “rejected” his script for Snootworld. He wrote the screenplay with Edward Scissorhands scribe and former Burton-whisperer Caroline Thompson, who says the script is so “wacky” it “takes her breath away.” She also provided an actual description of what the heck a Snoot is.
“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,” She told Deadline. “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.”
That crazy, magnificent world is not our own. In Lynch’s estimation, Snootworld is a little too “old fashioned” for modern audiences, which are used to contemporary animation that’s “more about surface jokes” and killing Lois. Snootworld is a “fairy tale,” and, unfortunately, according to Lynch, those are “considered groaners” that “apparently people don’t want to see.”
Lynch and Netflix have been circling each other for the last few years. In 2020, Netflix released what is, at this moment in time, Lynch’s final film, the talking monkey short, What Did Jack Do? Since then, Netflix has been rumored to pick up the next season of Twin Peaks and a new original project from Lynch called Wisteria. However, outside of annual speculation that he will show up at Cannes with a secret project, there’s been no mention of any new film project from the director. Lynch spent much of the pandemic entertaining people on YouTube with various projects, weather reports, and short films.
Ever the optimist, Lynch presses forward, hoping to find these Snoots a home before they become so small they disappear into the carpet.
10 Comments
I respect the hell out of David Lynch. He made my favorite TV show of all time, and my all time favorite watching drunk movie.I cannot blame ANYONE for refusing to work with him.
But these people sought David Lynch, a director known for a style that is both really weird and somehow old fashioned, and then turned down his project because it was too weird and old fashion. It’s like reaching out to David Cronenberg and then telling him his pitch is too gooey, with too many vaguely phallic/vaginal appendages/orifices. It’s especially strange that given one of Netflix’s most critically acclaimed projects in the past couple of years was a critically acclaimed, pretty accurate, family friendly adaptation of Pinocchio by another auteur.
I got the impression from other articles that Lynch reached out to Netflix and not the other way around. I would bet whatever happened with Wisteria is still lingering in their thoughts.
Why?
Lynch has been obsessing over making a movie where tiny people disappear into the carpet for forty years, as evidenced by this excerpt from his unrealized Dune II script. Wired Magazine recently dug up and reviewed the script treatment David Lynch drafted in 1984, and it’s pretty crazy. I don’t know anything about Snootworld, but it’s a shame we’ll never get to see the insanity Lynch had in store for his proposed Dune sequel.
I recall there’s a tiny people going into carpet scene in Mullholland Dr.
Eventually the Snoot hero must battle The Unknown, the evil chocolate maker that lives in the walls!
Toototabon convinced me that I needed more David Lynch in my life.But in all honesty I didn’t need much extra convincing. I rewatch Cleveland Show pretty much just for Lynch’s Gus the Barkeeper.
I don’t care what the project is, we definitely need more David Lynch weirdness these days.
What about Ronnie Rocket??