David Lynch Reveals He’s Not Premiering a New Movie at Cannes

A persistent rumor for the past week is that this year’s Cannes Film Festival will see the return of David Lynch to the big screen, with hearsay and scuttlebutt pointing toward a new movie from the Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive filmmaker. Part of it stems from a tweet on the subject but the rumor really gained traction after Variety reported that “there will even be a David Lynch feature film which has been completely off the radar and stars Laura Dern.” Not counting 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return, it has been sixteen years since a new David Lynch movie was released (2006’s Inland Empire) so the idea of a new, and also secret, Lynch has many fans frothing at the mouth. The man himself however says it’s not true.

While speaking with Entertainment Weekly in a new interview, Lynch was asked about the rumors that he has a new movie coming out, replying with a laugh and saying: “I have no new film coming out. That’s a total rumor. So there you are. It is not happening. I don’t have a project. I have nothing at Cannes. It’s unfortunate. It got built up that people thought, “Oh, that’d be nice.” But there is something new, but it’s not mine. I don’t know whose it is. They say there’s something new at Cannes, and they don’t say whose it is, and some people thought it was my film, but it’s not. So we’ll wait and see, and see whose it is.”

Even before this round of Cannes-specific rumors began to circulate, rumors of a new Lynch-directed project have been ongoing for some time. IndieWire previously brought word of the project codenamed “Wisteria,” which reportedly had Lynch as a director and was being produced for Netflix. Lynch also denied these rumors in an interview, using similar language by telling THR: “All these rumors are flying about, but I can tell you that there’s nothing happening in that regard.”

One thing that we do know that Lynch has participated in recently feature film wise isn’t a movie that he directed, instead the filmmaker was cast and will appear in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming The Fablemans. The film, set for a November release date, is set to be a biographical-drama based on the life of the Oscar-winning director of Saving Private Ryan. It’s unclear what role Lynch will be playing, with reports at the time calling it “a closely guarded secret.”