During his career, American film director David Lynch (1946–2025) had worked on a number of projects that never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of them fell into development hell and others were officially canceled.

1970s Gardenback Before starting work on Eraserhead, Lynch worked on a script titled Gardenback, based on his own painting of a hunched figure with vegetation growing from its back. Gardenback was a surrealist script about adultery, featuring a continually growing insect that represented one man's lust for his neighbor. He presented the script to the AFI, but they rejected it, as they felt the planned 45-minute runtime was too long for such a figurative, nonlinear script.

I'll Test My Log with Every Branch of Knowledge While working with Catherine E. Coulson on the prolonged production of Eraserhead, Lynch had an idea for a half-hour television show with the actress to be called I'll Test My Log with Every Branch of Knowledge. The series would have been about a middle-aged woman who took a log to various dentists, doctors, and physicians, each of whom talked about it, with the audience learning about its origins. Lynch later realized the character of the "Log Lady" in Twin Peaks, played by Coulson.

Ronnie Rocket

After Eraserhead's success, Lynch focused on the screenplay of his second film, Ronnie Rocket, which he also wanted to direct. The film's plot would have told the story of a detective seeking to enter a mysterious second dimension, aided by his ability to stand on one leg. He is obstructed on this quest by a strange landscape of odd rooms and a threatening train while being stalked by the "Donut Men", who wield electricity as a weapon. In addition to the detective's story, the film was to show the tale of Ronald d'Arte, a teenage dwarf, who suffers a surgical mishap that leaves him dependent on being plugged into an electrical supply at regular intervals; this dependence grants him an affinity with electricity, which he can use to produce music or cause destruction. The boy names himself Ronnie Rocket and becomes a rock star, befriending a tap-dancer named Electra-Cute. Michael J. Anderson and Dexter Fletcher were attached to the lead role at different times. The project never materialized due to financial conflicts, so Lynch left the production and directed The Elephant Man instead. Anderson later worked with Lynch in Twin Peaks.

1980s The Metamorphosis At some point in the 1980s, Lynch adapted Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis into a feature film screenplay. The project never came to fruition due to concerns about the cost of realizing Lynch's vision of the insect the story's protagonist transforms into and also Lynch's eventual reluctance to adapt the novella, saying it was "better left as a book".

Frances

Pleased after his work on The Elephant Man, Mel Brooks sought Lynch as the director of a film project on the life of troubled actress Frances Farmer for his company Brooksfilms. Though he was supposedly interested in the project, Lynch could not stay with it as he had recently signed an agreement with Universal. Graeme Clifford instead took on the position; the resulting film, entitled Frances, released in 1982. When later asked why he didn't attach himself, Lynch answered "I don't remember why I didn't do Frances".

Love in Vain After The Elephant Man, Lynch read a screenplay by Alan Greenberg based on the life of blues musician Robert Johnson, and he had mentioned wanting to direct a film of the screenplay in the decades since. As of 2012, Lynch was trying to produce and direct the film with French financing. In 2013, Lynch said: I'm a 30-year fan of the screenplay Alan Greenberg wrote for Love in Vain. I would very much like to direct it someday. But a number of things would have to fall in place before that would occur. In 2018, according to Vulture, Lynch was still attempting to raise funds to realize the film.

Dune II Lynch had planned to follow his adaptation of Dune with a sequel based on Dune Messiah. According to Lynch, he was more than halfway done with the script when he heard that it was not going to get the green light: I was really getting into Dune II. I wrote about half the script, maybe more, and I was really getting excited about it. It was much tighter, a better story.

A partial script of Dune II developed by Lynch with notes by Frank Herbert was discovered in summer 2023 at Herbert's archives at California State University, Fullerton. Based on the novel, the film had some differences from the novel's story, much like the first film had. After the critical and commercial failure of Dune, the sequel did not proceed.

Red Dragon

Lynch briefly developed a film version of Thomas Harris's Red Dragon for Dino De Laurentiis, but decided to drop the project, citing distaste for working on another major studio film, which he said has "no redeeming qualities". The film was eventually made and titled Manhunter, released in 1986.

The Trial In a 1986 interview, Lynch told David Chute that if German author Franz Kafka had written a script for a crime picture, he would direct it without hesitation; before adding that he'd like to someday adapt Kafka's The Trial for the bigscreen.

Venus Descending In 1987, after the success of Blue Velvet, a Warner Bros. executive hired Lynch to direct a film based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, based on Anthony Summers's best-selling book Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Lynch met with Summers and co-wrote the script with Mark Frost, the first of their many collaborations. The film would have revolved around the last few months of Monroe's life before her supposed assassination by Bobby Kennedy. The studio bailed out of the project for political reasons.

One Saliva Bubble On May 20, 1987, Lynch and Frost finished a script for a film project called One Saliva Bubble. Its plot centered around the small town of Newtonville, Kansas, where a secret government project goes amok when a guard's tiny saliva bubble shoots out of his mouth and into a weapons system. This sets off a chain reaction that discombobulates the entire town when the residents begin to switch identities with one another, causing "all kind of wacko hell [to break] loose", as Lynch said. "Clichés one end to the other." It was scheduled to star Steve Martin and Martin Short in lead roles. Characters included a Swiss scientist, an assassin, a car salesman, a black jazz musician, a white floozy, Chinese acrobats, Heinz 57 convention attendees, and the "world's stupidest man." In the chapter "Marty Throws a Party Just to Sing" of his 2014 autobiography, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend, Short wrote, We bought the house on the basis of the income I was about to make from two pending movies. You can guess what happened next. Practically the second we signed the mortgage, one of the two movies, a David Lynch film with Steve Martin entitled One Saliva Bubble fell through. Lynch said he had intended to direct the film through Dino De Laurentiis, who was facing bankruptcy at the time: We had all our scouts, had it cast, was right there ready to go. Dino kept delaying it, delaying it, delaying it. It became obvious it wasn't going to happen: there wasn't any money. Shortly thereafter his company went bankrupt. We saw the writing on the wall. De Laurentiis's rights to the project inhibited Lynch from setting it up at another studio. In mid-1992, the project was briefly revived and said to be Lynch's next project after Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

Up At the Lake Up At the Lake was one of the three projects, along with Venus Descending and One Saliva Bubble, that Lynch pitched to De Laurentiis before his business went under. The film was to be a mystery, but no script was written.

You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up In the late 1980s, Lynch mooted a film adaptation of Eric Knight's 1938 mystery novel You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up. The story follows a man dealing with luck, death, and irony. Lynch can be seen working on the script for the film in the 1989 documentary Don't Look at Me, but he dropped it before its completion.

The Lemurians Before making Twin Peaks, Lynch and Frost pitched a television series they called The Lemurians, based on the story of the lost continent of Lemuria, which sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It would have featured "a lot of poems" and "detectives tracking extraterrestrials", among other things. NBC turned them down.

1990s The White Hotel Around 1990, Lynch expressed interest in directing a new screen adaptation of D. M. Thomas's The White Hotel, with a screenplay by Dennis Potter. Before Lynch's involvement, filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci and Terrence Malick were associated with the project. Lynch intended to cast his then-girlfriend Isabella Rossellini in the main role. After they broke up, plans were scrapped.

Untitled Twin Peaks spin-off During the filming of Twin Peaks in the 1990s, Lynch at one point considered releasing a spin-off film of the series film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me centered around the character Audrey Horne. Sherilyn Fenn was attached to reprise her role. The project was not ultimately made, but elements of the story later inspired Lynch's film Mulholland Drive.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me sequels Before the release of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lynch planned to release a sequel to it as a continuation of the series after its cancellation. He also planned a third film. These plans were scrapped after the bad reception of Fire Walk with Me.

Domu: A Child's Dream After the successes of Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks, Lynch was approached to direct a live action film adaptation of the Japanese manga Domu: A Child's Dream. The project was set to be financed by Bandai Namco Pictures, based in Japan. Creator Katsuhiro Otomo agreed to relinquish the right to produce the adaptation on the basis of a treatment by Nilo Rodis-Jamero. The project began to collapse when Lynch and Rodis-Jamero brought it to Propaganda Films, which was more interested in striking a deal with Bandai than in making the film.

Dream of the Bovine Around 1994, Lynch and Twin Peaks writer Robert Engels co-wrote a script called Dream of the Bovine. Engels said it was about "three guys, who used to be cows, living in Van Nuys and trying to assimilate their lives." Harry Dean Stanton was attached to star and he and Lynch tried to convince Marlon Brando to co-star, but Brando was not interested, calling the script "pretentious bullshit".

Fantomas In 1995, the Gaumont approached Lynch to make a film based on the character Fantômas. Lynch recruited Michael Almereyda to rewrite his initial version before choosing to pursue a different project: Lost Highway.

Severed The Edward R. Pressman Film Corp. optioned the film rights to Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder the year of its publication. Lynch had been fascinated by the case for years. He was sent a copy of the book in 1997 and had briefly been involved to direct a film of the story, but hated the script that Alessandro Camon came up with, which was written by his then-girlfriend.

Mulholland Drive TV series iteration

In 1998, Lynch initially conceived Mulholland Drive as a 90-minute pilot produced by Touchstone Television, intended to be picked up for a series by ABC. During the filming of the pilot, ABC decided to not pick up the series. Lynch then reworked the pilot as a feature film, which was released in 2001.

Woodcutters from Fiery Ships video game In 1998, Synergy Interactive, a Japanese video game production company, announced that it was developing a computer game called Woodcutters from Fiery Ships, designed primarily by Lynch. Lynch was impressed with its earlier game Gadget: Invention, Travel, & Adventure, which he said "delivered an immersive experience to the user". He described the plot of Woodcutters as follows: