Donnie Darko: Richard Kelly teases possible new film in that universe!

January 26th 2021, 3:30pm

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Like most film geeks who came of age in the mid-2000s, Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko was a huge influence on me. It was a great, mind-bending film that helped ease me into more surreal filmmakers like David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky, as well as headier sci-fi ala Primer and Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. But even more than that, being set in high school around the same time I was also heading off to high school, it's more cerebral, fantastical, and surrealist narrative choices actually had a thematic resonance of mimicking the feelings of being isolated and misunderstood during that stage of development. And, hell, I still think the film holds up today, simply for its mesmerizing aesthetics and captivating star-making lead performance by Jake Gyllenhaal – even if, arguably, its twisty mysteries don't hold up to scrutiny quite as well.

Anyway, in an exclusive interview with Comingsoon.net, Kelly had this to say about a potential upcoming new Donnie Darko film he's currently working on:

Well, I’m probably not allowed to say anything more [about a new Donnie Darko film] than there has been an enormous amount of work completed. I’m hopeful that we might get to explore that world in a very big and exciting way. But we’ll see what happens. But there has been a lot of work done. A lot of work has been done.

So, obviously, not much info, but the fact "an enormous amount of work completed" is promising (or foreboding, depending on your perspective), as I'm personally not necessarily looking forward to Richard Kelly revisiting the franchise (which yes, is technically a franchise, if you count the straight-to-DVD S. Darko as canon) – especially with his more recent output. But, at the very least, he's a filmmaker who takes chances, so I'd like to believe it at least won't be a diluted retread like the aforementioned S. Darko was.

But what do you guys think? Fans of Donnie Darko? If so, looking forward to – or dreading – him returning to that universe? Either way, sound off below!