Richard Kel­ly says he wants to make a Don­nie Darko sequel

Excit­ing news for Don­nie Darko fans. Richard Kel­ly, the direc­tor of the eerie indie hit about a time-trav­el­ling teenag­er and a night­mar­ish rab­bit, has revealed that he hopes to make a sequel to his 2001 fea­ture in the near future. Part sci-fi part com­ing-of-age tale, the orig­i­nal film pre­miered at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val 16 years ago this month, where Kel­ly was duly hailed as one of America’s bright­est young film­mak­ing prospects.

Sad­ly, Kelly’s career hasn’t quite panned out as expect­ed. Almost two decades lat­er, he counts only South­land Tales and The Box as his oth­er direct­ing cred­its, and both were crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial fail­ures. But a recent 4K restora­tion and Blu-ray release of Don­nie Darko here in the UK means that there’s renewed inter­est in Kelly’s cult favourite. Speak­ing with to HMV, the direc­tor explains that he’d love to make a new film set in that world:

“I think there’s some­thing much big­ger and more ambi­tious to do in that uni­verse. It’s big and expen­sive and I think there’s time to get to that. I want to make sure we’ve got the bud­get to do it jus­tice and not to com­pro­mise any­thing. Anoth­er sto­ry in this world needs resources and we need to have that in place.”

It doesn’t seem like there’s a con­crete plan just yet, but few would begrudge Kel­ly for want­i­ng to make sure that every­thing is in place to make a sequel wor­thy of its pre­de­ces­sor. But this wouldn’t be the first time Kel­ly has gone back to Don­nie Darko. Back in 2004, he released a Director’s Cut with pre­vi­ous­ly delet­ed, explana­to­ry scenes. It was poor­ly received by diehard fans who felt it under­mined the appeal­ing­ly eso­teric nature of the orig­i­nal release. Let’s hope he doesn’t make the same mis­take twice.

It remains to be seen whether any poten­tial sequel will be direct­ly relat­ed to the events of the first film, or whether Kel­ly will serve up an entire­ly new sto­ry. Giv­en that the last time we saw Don­nie he was about to be crushed by an air­plane engine, we’re not exact­ly hope­ful that Jake Gyl­len­haal will reprise his break­out role…

Are you excit­ed about a pos­si­ble Don­nie Darko sequel? Have your say @LWLies