Despite David Lynch’s feature-length animation project having been rejected by Netflix, the fillmaker is still seeking financing for Snootworld.
David Lynch has been quietly trying to get an animated feature film up and running and although he might not have found the required funding to get the project into production, he isn’t giving up yet.
According to Deadline, the project is titled Snootworld, and despite Lynch being famed as a filmmaker whose tastes veer towards the mature, this one is said to be ‘story that children and adults can appreciate.’
The script for Snootworld was written a couple of decades ago, with Lynch working with Caroline Thompson to create the story.
Thompson, who scripted such 90s classics as The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands and The Addams Family described the film as such: “The Snoots are these 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. 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”.
Per the report, Netflix has already turned the project down following Lynch pitching what he describes as a ‘fairytale’ film to executives at the streaming platform. The filmmaker has chatted briefly about that experience to the outlet, stating that “I don’t know when I started thinking about Snoots but I’d do these drawings of Snoots and then a story started to emerge … I got together with Caroline and we worked on a script. Just recently I thought someone might be interested in getting behind this so I presented it to Netflix in the last few months but they rejected it.”
According to Lynch, the world has changed since he and Caroline Thompson first envisaged the story back in the 1990s, and there’s reluctance to make old-fashioned fairy tales.
Lynch hasn’t directed a feature film since 2006’s Inland Empire, although he’s helmed plenty of other projects in the years since. There’s no guarantee that he’d direct Snootworld if the film did secure backing, but he did say this about the project: “I like this story. It’s something that children and adults can both appreciate…I’ve never really done a straight animation but with computers today it’s possible to do some spectacular things.”
While Snootworld may not come to pass, it’s still interesting to see how a creative visionary like Lynch (who is responsible for such mind-bendingly imaginative works as Dune, Eraserhead and Twin Peaks) never stops envisaging new projects, even though his directing days may well be behind him. Should we hear more regarding Snootworld, we’ll certainly let you know.
Read more: David Lynch’s Dune | How conflicting ambitions resulted in a flawed classic
