David Lynch Cast in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans

Steven Spielberg’s latest film The Fabelmans was already confirmed to star the likes of Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, and Seth Rogen, but the Oscar-winning filmmaker just made an addition that has film fans salivating, bringing on legendary cult filmmaker David Lynch to act in his next feature. Variety brings word of Lynch’s casting in the film, but reveals that his role in the movie is “a closely guarded secret.” The Fabelmans has previously been called a semi-autobiographical feature for Spielberg, blossoming from his own life growing up in Arizona. According to the trade Spielberg is already in Post-production on the film as well.

“I was infatuated with the control that movies gave me in creating a sequence of events or a feeling, stuff like a train wreck with two Lionel trains that I could then repeat and see over and over again,” Spielberg said in a DGA interview back in 2006 about his past. “I think it was just a realization that I could change the way I perceived life through another medium to make it come out better for me. I was making these little 8mm rinky-dink movies and I knew that made me feel really good about my life, and possibly I could bring some other people into this amazing medium, to enjoy what I was putting together.”  

This marks the latest time that Spielberg has cast another filmmaker in an acting role in one of his movies. Spielberg famously hired French New Wave director François Truffaut for his 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and later Academy Award winning director Richard Attenborough in 1993’s Jurassic Park (Attenborough had previously beaten Spielberg for Best Director and Best Picture with his movie Ghandi, winning out over E.T.). 

Though Lynch is best known for writing and directing cult films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mullholland Drive, and co-creating Twin Peaks, he has dabbled in acting previously. In addition to making cameos in his own movies, Lynch also took on a major role in Peaks, playing FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole. Lynch also lent his voice to The Cleveland Show, voicing the character of Gus for 22 episodes, and later appearing in the Louis C.K. TV series Louis on FX for two episodes.

 Universal Pictures has The Fabelmans scheduled for a Thanksgiving 2022 release date.