Begun after the success of his 1977 film Eraserhead, Lynch shelved Ronnie Rocket due to an inability to find financial backing for the project.

Ronnie Rocket, also subtitled The Absurd Mystery of the Strange Forces of Existence, was to feature elements which have since come to be seen as Lynch's hallmarks, including industrial art direction, 1950s popular culture and physical deformity.

The script featured a three-foot tall man with control over electricity; Lynch first met Michael J. Anderson when tentatively casting for this role and later worked with him in Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive.

Ronnie Rocket concerns the story of a detective seeking to enter a mysterious second dimension, aided by his ability to stand on one leg.

He is being obstructed on this quest by a strange landscape of odd rooms and a mysterious train, while being stalked by the "Donut Men", who wield electricity as a weapon.

[1] The film, subtitled The Absurd Mystery of the Strange Forces of Existence,[2] was to make use of several themes that have since become recurring elements in David Lynch's works—a write-up for The A.V.

[3] Writing for LA Weekly, John Dentino suggested that the screenplay "reads like the source work for all [Lynch's] films, as well as Twin Peaks".

[4] The film's art direction would have featured a heavily industrial backdrop; Greg Olson described the action as taking place against an "oil slick, smokestack, steel-steam-soot, fire-sparks and electrical arcs realm", similar to the direction ultimately taken in the depiction of Victorian England in The Elephant Man and the planet Giedi Prime in Dune.

[6] After releasing 1977's Eraserhead, a black-and-white surrealist film and his debut feature-length production,[7] Lynch began work on the screenplay for Ronnie Rocket.

Cornfeld found four scripts he felt would interest Lynch, but on hearing the name of the first of these, the director decided his next project would be The Elephant Man.

Lynch would return to Ronnie Rocket after each of his films, intending it, at different stages, as the follow-up not only to Eraserhead or The Elephant Man but also Dune, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

As a direct result of meeting Anderson, Lynch cast the actor in a recurring role in the television series Twin Peaks; his first appearance was in 1990's "Episode 2".

[16] Lynch visited northern England to scout a filming location for Ronnie Rocket, but found that the industrial cities he had hoped to use had become too modernized to fit his intended vision.

Working with drummer Stephen Hodges and bassist Don Falzone, Alvin said they "came up with something that sounded like a cross between Muddy Waters, Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis and The Cramps.

[20] Having been temporarily unable to begin production on the film for some time because De Laurentiis owned the rights,[21] Lynch stopped actively pursuing Ronnie Rocket as a viable project in the early 1990s upon rejection from Ciby 2000, as a part of a three-picture deal.

[28] Speaking of the difficulty in attracting financing for the film, Dexter Fletcher said "I should imagine that the big money heads at whatever studio it was couldn't get their brains round it at all.