Did Netflix just nix a generation of nightmares? Fever-dream master David Lynch told Deadline that the streamer turned down a chance to be home to his Snootworld, an animated “story that children and adults can appreciate.” Lynch co-wrote the story of the Snoots with Caroline Thompson, the former Tim Burton collaborator who penned The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, and the 1991 version of The Addams Family. Someone’s going to make this, right? Right?
According to Thompson, she wrote the first and third acts of the screenplay with Lynch handling the middle act, an appropriately insane way to partner on a script. She describes the plot as “wackadoo,” which also should go without saying: “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 says. “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.”
This has to be the carpet, right?
What was Netflix thinking? Lynch says he gets it. “Snootworld is kind of an old fashioned story and animation today is more about surface jokes,” he says. “Old fashioned fairytales are considered groaners: apparently, people don’t want to see them. It’s a different world now and it’s easier to say no than to say yes.”
It’s been a minute since we’ve seen a Lynch creation of any kind. He hasn’t made a movie since 2006’s Inland Empire. His delightfully surreal Twin Peaks reboot came out in 2017, meaning it’s been seven years since we’ve seen new work from the 78-year-old artist. I’d even take more of the daily weather reports that Lynch stopped at the end of 2022.
Snootworld probably isn’t dead yet. There are other streamers in the sea, as well as outlets like A24. Wouldn’t Apple want to get into the David Lynch business? Might be worth it for the buzz, if nothing else, although Lynch hasn’t confirmed if he’d actually direct the project. He told Deadline he was hoping his daughter Jennifer might helm Snootworld (she’s a regular director on American Horror Story), but she has “so many things in the pipeline that she ultimately thought it would be better for me or someone else to direct it”.
Could Snootworld be Lynch’s next project? Or does he have another secret nightmare brewing? “I can’t talk about those things right now,” he said. In other words, HE DIDN’T SAY NO.
Meanwhile, we can dream of a future visit to Snootworld. Thompson makes it sound like a worthwhile trip: “It takes my breath away how wacky it is.”