Master filmmaker David Lynch wasn’t done telling mind-bending stories before his untimely passing in January 2025, and we finally have details on what was meant to be his latest one. In a revelatory interview with The Film Stage, Lynch’s longtime cinematographer Peter Deming shared rare details on the inner workings of Lynch’s planned Netflix series Unrecorded Night, and how it was going to continue one of his most famous cinematic stories.
It was first reported that Lynch was developing the Netflix series in November 2020, when it was still under the working title Wisteria. Over the next four years, we heard everything from the series starting production in May 2021 with frequent collaborator (and damn fine cherry pie enthusiast) Kyle MacLachlan rumored to be part of it, to Lynch possibly debuting it as a film at Cannes Film Festival in 2022. I’m not sure the revered director ever uttered the words “unrecorded night” in public before his death, yet the mere possibility of it existing made every diehard Lynch fan reflexively try to figure out what it was about. According to Deming, the series was going to continue Lynch’s focus on Los Angeles, which started with films like Mulholland Drive and INLAND EMPIRE.
“It was definitely a really interesting… mystery,” he explained. “To me, this was another LA canon for him, and one that sort of mixed in filmmaking and Old Hollywood a bit.”
One thing Deming is definitive about is that Unrecorded Night “was definitely not Twin Peaks,” the surrealist drama series the reclusive genius is most known for. Lynch previously pointed to his declining health and disheartening changes in the movie industry as reasons for him never making movies again. Even so, he was still a filmmaker at his core, as Deming implied they didn’t know how many episodes Unrecorded Night was going to be, since the script was written as one long story rather than an episodic one. “I really love the feature stuff, but he was like, ‘I’m not going to make any more movies. I’m just going to make longer stories because I love the longer story.’”
Unfortunately for all of us, Deming revealed that they had only scouted locations to film once before COVID-19 hit, which doused any momentum the series had of being created before Lynch’s death. I’m sure there are legions of fans willing to give up their firstborn child to get a copy of that script for a final dive into one of the most eccentric creative minds of our time. But whether it’s released to the public or not, it’s good to know that Lynch was committed to cinematic storytelling until his dying day.