The world of Donnie Darko never felt complete. Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult classic film posed so many questions and provided so few concrete answers that it was almost begging to be explored in additional depth. Well, it took 25 years, but now it’s finally happening. An official sequel to Donnie Darko is coming, and if it’s successful, it could just be the start.
Later this year, Richard Kelly will release a book called The Philosophy of Time Travel, which is subtitled “The Epic Sequel to the Motion Picture Donnie Darko.” It takes place immediately following the events of the film, exploring the aftereffects of Donnie’s death for about 14 months. It’s told through various found documents and points of view from characters trying to come to terms with what the hell just happened to Donnie and the world as a whole. (There’s no mention of S. Darko, the direct-to-video sequel, in this news, so we assume that’s not a part of this.)
Kelly has been slowly writing and thinking about the story for decades and wants the book to be the spark to make film sequels, which is something he’s also been exploring for years.
“My caveat with doing a real sequel was that I want to reunite the original cast, and I want to take it onto a gigantic scale, and that takes time, and it has a price tag, and it’s hard to pull this off because it’s multiple movies,” Kelly told Variety, which broke the story. “It’s this big, gigantic, unwieldy thing that I have to sort of wrestle into submission. But in my mind, that’s what it should be. Just given the way this movie has connected with people for so long. So I’ve set out to just build the whole thing out and map the entire thing out, knowing that there’s a lot of challenges associated with doing that.”
“I think what I realized as the story got bigger and bigger and bigger is that I needed to go back in time and away from the sequel, and tell the story of what happens in the 14 months after Donnie’s death, like immediately after his death, because there’s so much essential information in that section of the sequel,” Kelly continued. “And in my mind, I was like, why don’t I actually put together a novel and just publish that part of the sequel as a novel, so that I can release it into the world, and that will set the ship on its voyage to wherever this goes. And so this, in my mind, is the final puzzle piece to launching this sequel and to see what becomes of it.”
Kelly explains that while he has yet to approach the cast about these grand ideas, he has been in touch with them over the years, they know he’s still thinking about it, and ultimately he hopes this book becomes almost his pitch to them. “I never want to put pressure on anyone or make anyone feel like they have to give me an answer,” he said. “That’s ultimately going to be a decision that the whole cast, with each individual deciding what they want to do, and they’re going to have this big gigantic book to read to see what happens to their character, all the new definition added to their character. I have every actor’s voice in my head. They’re so crystal clear, and I know what they sounded like 25 years ago, I know what they sound like now.”
While it certainly remains to be seen if Kelly can turn this book into a movie, let alone multiple movies, at least this book is coming. This official sequel is coming. And, if it goes beyond that, that would be fantastic. But for now, on the 25th anniversary of the film, we are finally getting some sort of true sequel to Donnie Darko, and it’s available to pre-order now. Head over to Variety to read even more from Kelly about the book and his sequel aspirations.
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