Ted Sarandos says COVID stopped a David Lynch Netflix series

Over the past few days, the internet has been filled with tributes to the late David Lynch, celebrating the life and talents of one of America’s true and unique artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. This includes notes from the many people who worked with… or almost has worked with — Lynch on his many projects, the latter issue including Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, who revealed that various industry rumors and whispers that Lynch attempted to develop a mysterious TV project with Netflix in the early 2020s were true.

Writing on Instagram, Sarandos discussed the limited series that was being talked about in the press under the working name Wisteriastating: “It was a David Lynch production, full of mystery and risks, but we wanted to continue this creative adventure with this genius. First Covid, then some health uncertainties meant that this project never saw the light of day but we made it clear that as soon as it could, we were all in it. (Sarandos does not responding to a statement Lynch made in late 2024 that Netflix had recently passed on another project he had written with Edward Scissorhands the writer Caroline Thompson, an animated film entitled Snootmonde.)

Sarandos’ post also highlights the real work of Netflix (which has the distinction of currently hosting Lynch’s latest released film, the Talking Monkey short). What did Jack do?) made, at the time of its DVD, to disseminate Lynch’s work. Sarandos says he personally contacted Lynch at the time to purchase DVDs of the director’s first feature film in bulk. Eraser headthat the service had struggled to store, conversations that led Netflix to produce an anthology of Lynch’s early short films in 2002. (It also allowed Sarandos, an unabashed Lynch fan, to watch a three-hour advance clip of Mulholland Walk in Lynch’s personal screening room, which feels like a truly surreal experience, especially after Lynch apparently leaves halfway through, leaving Sarandos to walk out of the director’s house.)