Back in the early 1990s, David Lynch and Mark Frost created a blend of their artistic specialities - surrealism and crime drama, respectively - in the shape of a TV series called Twin Peaks. The show ran for only two seasons, but has since become a cult hit and has continued to fascinate new viewers with its strange mix of murder-mysery tropes, soap opera storytelling, quirky humor, and nightmarish fantasy elements. It also generated a somewhat more divisive movie in 1992, titled Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (directed by Lynch), which has a cult following all its own.
As you can see from the video above, the series has been confirmed to return in 2016, twenty-five years after its second season aired. Lynch and Frost have teased a Twin Peaks revival on and off over the years; lately, though, they pair have dropped much heavier hints that pointed to something actually happening in that arena. [Insert obligatory "It is happening... AGAIN" joke.] Today's news has confirmed that it wasn't just the duo messing with the hearts of the many Twin Peaks fans out there.
Variety is reporting that Lynch and Frost, who have retained ownership of the Twin Peaks property for years, are taking the series to Showtime; at least nine brand-new episodes will be produced for release in 2016, with Lynch currently planning to direct all of them. Lynch, in recent years, has expressed his opinion that TV nowadays is a better fit for his arthouse sensibilities than film (cable TV in particular), so it makes sense that he would take Twin Peaks to a network like Showtime - allowing the series far more play room than it had on ABC in the '90s.
Variety's sources report that the new episodes of Twin Peaks will "reflect the passage of time" since the second season aired twenty-five years ago, and will bring fans up to speed on life with "key characters" from the series' initial run. Presumably, that will include Kyle MacLachlan - who is currently on the small screen playing Skye's "father" on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - as coffee and pie-loving federal agent Dale Cooper. Twin Peaks fans no doubt remember he was in a bad place, last time we saw him (see: the infamous cliffhanger ending to the show's second season).
More details will surely be arriving in the near future, but for now the news of more Twin Peaks is more than enough to generate excitement (and, of course, trepidation) on its own. Not to mention, the prospect of a David Lynch TV series on cable television - the same channel that airs such programs as the gnarly Victorian horror series Penny Dreadful no less - may be intriguing enough to get those unfamiliar with Twin Peaks' initial run to give it a look. Meanwhile, longtime fans now have a perfect excuse to revisit past episodes, to freshen their memory before the revival begins.
In fact, this news calls for a celebratory dance...
We'll bring you more information on the Twin Peaks revival (which begins in 2016) when we have it.
Source: Variety