It’s commonplace for actors to try their hand at directing, but it’s not as often that directors step in front of the camera in high-profile movies.
But today’s news, first reported by Variety, is that filmmaker David Lynch has joined the ensemble of Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film The Fabelmans, inspired by his childhood in Arizona and which is currently in postproduction and scheduled for release by Universal Pictures on November 23rd, 2022.
Lynch has acted before, primarily in his own productions, including what may be his definitive work, the TV series Twin Peaks and its recent Showtime revival The Return, as FBI Agent Gordon Cole. The director received Oscar nominations for The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive. He was the recipient of an honorary Academy Award several years ago, and his last feature film as director was Inland Empire in 2006. Lynch has been posting regular weather reports on YouTube during the pandemic.
Though their careers started around the same time in the 1970s, the closest Lynch and Spielberg have come to overlapping before is when they were both nominated for Golden Globes in 2001 in the same category, Lynch for Mulholland Drive and Spielberg for A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Lynch is just the latest addition to an already impressive ensemble that includes Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as characters inspired by Spielberg’s parents, Seth Rogen as a stand-in for his uncle, Julia Butters as his sister, and Gabriel LaBelle as Sammy, who is based on Spielberg himself. Also in the cast are Judd Hirsch, Sam Rechner, Oakes Fegley, Chloe East, Jeannie Berlin, Robin Bartlett, Jonathan Hadary, and Isabelle Kusman.
For The Fabelmans, Spielberg is also a co-writer with Tony Kushner, which marks Spielberg’s first writing credit since A.I. Spielberg and Kushner have recently celebrated success with last year’s West Side Story, which is expected to be a major player on the list of Oscar nominees next week, and also worked together on Lincoln and Munich. Spielberg won Oscars previously for directing Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, and has been making films consistently for half a century now following his feature debut with Duel in 1971.