Fire Walk with Me was greeted at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival with booing and jeers from the audience and met with negative reviews in the United States. The film fared poorly in the United States at the box office, partially because it was released almost a year after the television series was canceled (due to a sharp ratings decline in the second season). However, it was a commercial hit in Japan.

After Fire Walk with Me was released, Lynch reportedly planned two more films that would have continued and then concluded the series' narrative. But in a 2001 interview, he said that the Twin Peaks franchise is "dead as a doornail."