David Lynch‘s unproduced scripts for Unrecorded Night, a miniseries he shopped around in recent years, may see the light of day. The late filmmaker’s daughter, Jennifer, wrote on Reddit that she and her siblings were contemplating releasing them.
“Unrecorded Night scripts are likely to be published by myself and my siblings as a way to offer what could not be realized, to those who would have loved it,” she wrote.
If it seems unusual for the Lynches to want to distribute the materials for an unmade project, it is. In 2018, when Rolling Stone asked David if he would continue working on anything along the lines of Twin Peaks: The Return, he curtly replied, “I don’t talk about that.” So why now?
“I beg everyone to wait for this release and not hunt down what will likely be unauthorized versions and would soil the beautiful work Dad created,” Jennifer wrote in her Reddit note. “Like many millions of people, we are great fans of our father’s work, and wish to see it shared and celebrated in every good way. We know there is a wanting, and we feel the need to fulfill Dad’s gifts as best as possible.” Clearly, these remarks are aimed at bootleggers and internet ne’er-do-wells who may have nabbed a copy of the script floating around.
What has circulated about Unrecorded Night’s content is that it would be part of Lynch’s “L.A. canon” (such as Mulholland Drive), meaning a combo of mystery and Old Hollywood, according to cinematographer Peter Deming (via WorldOfReel). Lynch allegedly hoped for Naomi Watts, Laura Dern, and Kyle MacLachlan to appear in the work, along with Toby Jones as the lead.
“We started pre-production right before Covid hit, and then we got shut down,” producer Sabrina Sutherland told Boston Hassle. “And then we were continuing working, David was rewriting all the way up to his passing. In fact, we were going to meet the next week, on Tuesday, and he passed away on Thursday the week before. It was very disappointing. We were going to be meeting with Netflix fairly soon. I had already contacted them to say we had the project for them to see.”
She added that the miniseries, which would be “this massive, epic thing,” meaning 20 to 25 episodes, would be unique. “It was a completely different story, but it would have been very interesting,” she said.
In related news, a collection of Lynch’s scripts, including the unproduced Ronnie Rocket: The Absurd Mystery of the Strange Forces of Existence, sold for $150,000 at auction last year. Lynch had begun work on that script sometime in the late Seventies.
