There are rarely film debuts that are as spectacular and visionary as Donnie Darko. Director Richard Kelly was with the work only later became a young cult directorwho then almost ended his career in a similarly spectacular way.
After a total of three films and 15 years later, the question remains whether Kelly will return to the director’s chair again. The answer is as complex as the time travel theory in Donnie Darko.
Richard Kelly created sci-fi masterpieces when he was only in his mid-20s
A scary man in a bunny costume reveals to teenager Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) that the world will end in 28 days. This apocalyptic prophecy begins Kelly’s debut, which he began filming when he was just 24 years old. What follows is a melancholic-pop mix of high school film, sci-fi time travel and dark psychological thrillerwhich was only able to capture the hearts of film fans with a delay.
Watch another trailer for Donnie Darko here:
Donnie Darko – Trailer (German)
Because the turbine of a crashing plane from the film was promoted and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 happened shortly before the film’s release, marketing for Kelly’s feature film debut was significantly scaled back. Donnie Darko initially flopped and only developed into a hotly debated cult success in the years that followed when it was released on DVD.
For example, in the renowned Empire magazine’s list of the 50 best independent films, the film made it to third place behind Martin Scorsese’s Cauldron and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Richard Kelly became like this retroactively declared a directing prodigywhich came to attention with less positive headlines a few years after Donnie Darko.
Sci-fi excess Southland Tales almost destroyed Richard Kelly’s career
Kelly’s second feature is the kind of overambitious spectacle where the The line between genius and madness is very thin runs. Southland Tales premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival as an unfinished, 160-minute rough version and received extremely negative reviews there. Despite stars like Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Justin Timberlake, the sci-fi film couldn’t even gross a million in theaters with a budget of 17 million dollars as a shorter, cut version.
The commercial demise of Southland Tales could have something to do with the fact that the director wildly throws together topics such as the Third World War, megalomaniacal scientists, alternative energy sources, games of confusion, rifts in time, conspiracy theories and Bible quotations. In comparison, Donnie Darko, which is not exactly easy to decipher, seems like a straightforward, simple mainstream blockbuster.
You can watch another Southland Tales trailer here:
Southland Tales – official trailer
In any case, Southland Tales severely damaged Kelly’s reputation, which meant that he only filmed the mystery thriller The Box – You Are the Experiment. The film starring Cameron Diaz was another flop at the box office.
Richard Kelly can’t let go of his science fiction past
In the years following The Box, the director talked about planned projects, such as a 3D thriller, that never came to fruition. It seemed as if Kelly was getting lost in ideas and gradually saying goodbye to the film business. In more recent interviews, in which he would rather not even be asked about upcoming projects, he prefers to talk about the past.
In particular, Southland Tales, Kelly’s most infamous disaster, seems to be haunting the director. The director still seems to want to delve further into the weird sci-fi universe. On X he explained in a post in 2020:
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Southland Tales is a saga with six chapters. The existing film covers the second half. I’ve written graphic novels with Brett Weldele that cover the first three chapters. I have completed an ambitious new scriptwhich uses the books as a blueprint for an ambitious new film.
In an interview with Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow) earlier this year, Kelly spoke about the fact that he Southland Tales still sees as unfinished. When Schoenbrun asks him whether he wants to finish the film itself or continue the story from it and transfer it to another work, Kelly answers:
For me it’s all one and the same. I hope to be able to expand and realize the entire six chapters and the graphic novel. We’ll see. I’ll keep drumming for it.
Already in 2021 he was allowed to watch the so-called Cannes cut, i.e. the 160-minute-long original version Bonus material on a new Blu-ray edition publish in the USA.
Kelly spoke to Comic Book that year about how he would like to create a giga version of Southland Tales with a running time of six hours:
So it’s like a story with six chapters, but it would be presented in two epic films, like a big double feature, that could ideally exist on a streaming platformwhich is more suitable for these types of long stories. If people wanted to skip to the chapters, they would have that option, but in an ideal world it would be presented as a six-hour project split into two major feature films. Could streaming services like Netflix offer a future for Richard Kelly?
The mention of a streaming platform, on the other hand, is reminiscent of projects that are unsuitable for cinema, such as the 4-hour Snyder Cut of Justice League or Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. Both works that were realized for Warner’s HBO Max and Netflix. In general, it is now most likely that the director could best realize his open wishes and ideas with the help of a large streamer.
Until then, it seems like Richard Kelly is now became the main character in one of his films. Maybe he’s just waiting to travel through time like Donnie Darko so he can come to terms with his past.