Film director David Lynch is releasing 51-minutes of “lost” footage from his 1986 iconic film, Blue Velvet, via a new Criterion release.
The release, scheduled for May, will feature The Lost Footage, a 51-minute compilation of deleted scenes and alternate takes which will be included in the new Criterion release as one of several special features.
The film will also receive a special 4K digital restoration on Blu-ray. The re-release will additionally include a 70-minute film from 2002 – Mysteries of Love – documenting the making of the cult-classic and a feature-length reflection on the film – ‘Blue Velvet Revisited’ – by Peter Braatz, filmed on set during production. An alternate original stereo soundtrack and trailer will also be included.
Lynch first hinted at the existence of the “lost footage” in 2011 after outtakes were discovered in 2011 and was previously included on the film’s 25-year anniversary release.
At the time, Lynch told KCRW: “You know, there is a thing called b-negative, or outtakes, or lifts, that don’t make it into the film…and in the old days, those things sat around and maybe became dangerously close to being tossed away.
“So one day I looked into seeing where the [Blue Velvet] lifts were because some of these scenes on their own would be beautiful to see again…Lately, those have been found. Somewhere up in Seattle. It’s incredible. I’m seeing stuff I thought was gone forever.”
Blue Velvet will now join several other Lynch films already released on Criterion including Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Mullholland Drive and Eraserhead.
Last year, it was reported that Lynch was raising funds to help make a new feature-length rock biopic.
The Twin Peaks director was mentioned in a Vulture article in which the novelist Jeff Jackson recommends Alan Greenberg’s 1983 novel Love in Vain: The Life and Legends of Robert Johnson. In the blurb about the book, Jackson noted that Lynch is in the middle of raising funds to bring a screenplay of the book, which has remained unpublished for years, to the screen.
Lynch, who is reportedly a long-term fan of the screenplay, has not directed a feature film since Inland Empire from 2006. The script reportedly tells the tale of legendary blues artist Robert Johnson and is said to follow a “half-fable, half-non-fictional story” according to Consequence of Sound.
Speaking about the screenplay in 2013, Lynch said that he would “very much like to direct it someday” and added at the time that “a number of things would have to fall in place before that would occur.”