Months after Twin Peaks: The Return had come and gone, word circulated that David Lynch might be taking his singular talents to Netflix. Colleagues told stories of glimpsing the director at Netflix HQ. Others insisted the streaming network would play home to Lynch's next feature film (some people really swung for the fences, suggesting that Netflix might finally shell out the money Lynch needed to make Ronnie Rocket, one of his many great unmade scripts). Still others whispered that another season of Twin Peaks might happen there.
All of that was a long time ago, and - as you've surely noticed - there's been no announcement of a new Lynch feature since, nor anything concrete about another season of Twin Peaks, and certainly nothing new on the Ronnie Rocket front. In the end, it seemed those rumors were just that - rumors. Far as we could tell, any meetings Lynch might've had with the world's biggest streaming service must've hit a brick wall. C'est la vie.
But here's an interesting development:
As you can see, Netflix is now streaming David Lynch's What Did Jack Do?, a seventeen-minute short film wherein a detective (Lynch) interrogates a monkey (yes, the monkey talks) who may have committed a murder. The whole thing's presented in black-and-white, with Lynch doing a slightly more subdued take on the (much louder) lawman character he perfected on Twin Peaks, and takes place within a train station's diner. It is, as you'd expect, very surreal.
Is this the start of a working relationship between Netflix and Lynch? Are more short films on the way? Is this just a one-off deal, something Lynch did as a lark and sold to the network for funsies? We're not entirely sure at the moment, but we're certainly eager to learn more, and figured you'd want to be aware of this in the meantime. I mean, what are you gonna do, not watch a 17-minute short film wherein David Lynch interrogates a monkey?
UPDATE: According to The Playlist's Kevin Jagernauth, What Did Jack Do? is a few years old (The short premiered in Paris in 2017, and later screened at the NYC Festival of Disruption). So maybe this isn't the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership between Lynch and Netflix. Or maybe it is! We don't know! But here's hoping this is the start of something bigger. I mean, after all, Netflix does have billions to spend on original programming this year.
Stay tuned for further updates as they roll in.