On Oct. 19, 2001, Mulholland Drive went into wide U.S. release. Janus Films marked the 25th anniversary on Oct. 19, 2026. The movie had taken an unusual route to theaters: Vanity Fair reports that David Lynch and producer Tony Krantz originally sold ABC on a television pilot led by then-unknown Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux. The network passed after seeing the pilot.
StudioCanal's Pierre Edelman then offered to buy the rights from ABC and raise an additional $7 million to turn the project into a feature. Lynch reconceived the footage, wrote and filmed 18 new script pages, and completed the movie. In a Criterion interview, Lynch said the shift from pilot to feature simplified the project as its narrative threads came together.
The finished 146-minute film follows aspiring actor Betty Elms (Watts), who arrives in Hollywood and meets an amnesiac woman played by Harring, while Theroux's filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into trouble casting a movie. lists in its 2001 competition and notes that Lynch shared the festival's Best Director award.
