The 78-year-old Twin Peaks co-creator shared the news in the September issue of Sight and Sound magazine. “I’ve gotten emphysema from smoking for so long, and so I’m homebound whether I like it or not,” he revealed. “I can’t go out. And I can only walk a short distance before I’m out of oxygen.”

Lynch also divulged that due to his diagnosis, it would be “very bad” for him to become sick with COVID-19 or even a cold. For that reason, he added that any future directing he does would need to be from his house. While he admitted that he “wouldn’t like that so much,” he added that he would try helming remotely “if it comes to it.”

The Emmy-nominated filmmaker also updated his fans on X (formerly Twitter). “Yes, I have emphysema from my many years of smoking. I have to say that I enjoyed smoking very much, and I do love tobacco – the smell of it, lighting cigarettes on fire, smoking them – but there is a price to pay for this enjoyment, and the price for me is emphysema,” he wrote.

The Mulholland Drive writer-director continued, “I have now quit smoking for over two years. Recently I had many tests and the good news is that I am in excellent shape except for emphysema. I am filled with happiness, and I will never retire. I want you all to know that I really appreciate your concern. Love, David.”

According to the Cleveland Clinic, emphysema is a lung disease that is primarily caused by smoking. Symptoms include shortness of breath, coughing and fatigue.

Besides Mulholland Drive, Lynch has also helmed movies like Blue Velvet and the 1984 version of Dune. His most recent feature was Inland Empire, which was released in 2006. In 2019, he received an honorary Academy Award.

In 2017, the filmmaker brought back Twin Peaks, the mystery drama television series he created with Mark Frost, for a third season on Showtime. The follow-up season, which was named Twin Peaks: The Return and premiered 26 years after the original show’s conclusion on ABC in 1991, received critical acclaim.

Then in 2022, news surfaced Lynch would be debuting a secret new project at that year’s Cannes Film Festival. However, he quickly denied the claims.

“I have no new film coming out,” the filmmaker told Entertainment Weekly at the time. “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.'”

Moving forward in his career, Lynch told Deadline in April that he was looking for a financial backer to make an animated movie called Snootworld. He co-penned the story with The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Addams Family scribe Caroline Thompson

“Just recently I thought someone might be interested in getting behind this so I presented it to Netflix in the last few months but they rejected it,” Lynch told Deadline in April.

“Snootworld is kind of an old fashioned story and animation today is more about surface jokes,” the filmmaker added. “Old fashioned fairytales are considered groaners: apparently people don’t want to see them. It’s a different world now and it’s easier to say no than to say yes.”

Lynch was also previously set to shoot a Netflix series known as Unrecorded Night in 2020. However, the show was cancelled due to the pandemic, according to Lynch’s longtime producer, Sabrina Sutherland.