DONNIE DARKO Sequel Book THE PHILOSOPHY OF TIME TRAVEL Arrives This Year as Richard Kelly Plans Multiple Movies
It’s been 25 years since Donnie Darko met his fate beneath a falling jet engine, but Richard Kelly isn’t finished messing with our heads.
The filmmaker is officially returning to the strange universe of Donnie Darko with The Philosophy of Time Travel, a massive new sequel novel that continues the story immediately after the events of the 2001 cult classic.
The roughly 800-page book has been in the works for a decade, and it turns out it’s only the beginning of Kelly’s much larger plan for the franchise.
The Philosophy of Time Travel is set in 1988 and begins during the 14 months following Donnie’s death. It’s expected to arrive in near the end of the year through Range Literary Publishing, lining up with the 25th anniversary of Donnie Darko on October 26. The book is already available for preorder through Barnes & Noble and Amazon, with a specific release date coming later.
I still remember seeing Donnie Darko when it first opened in theaters. I loved it. The whole thing was so mind-bending and insane, and that was exactly what made it so damn good. It was a unique film with the kind of movie that sent you out of the theater trying to figure out what the hell you had just watched.
I’ve always wondered how Kelly could possibly continue that story, especially given how the movie ends. Now, after all these years, we’re finally going to find out.
Produced by Flower Films, Donnie Darko premiered at Sundance in 2001 before Newmarket Films released it theatrically later that year. The film starred Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie alongside Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, Katharine Ross, Patrick Swayze, Noah Wyle, and Seth Rogen.
Kelly has stayed in contact with the cast, which could become very important because his plans go far beyond publishing a Donnie Darko sequel book. He wants The Philosophy of Time Travel adapted into an animated and motion-capture film, followed by a live-action continuation that jumps roughly 28 years into the future.
Kelly explained: “I’ve kept in touch with all the cast over the years. I’m fairly certain they’re aware that I’ve been working on all this stuff, everything, and the sequel is so big that this book starts off in the 14 months after Donnie’s death, and then there is much more narrative material that I’ve been developing where the time jumps 28 years into the future, and there’s a lot of really exciting stuff that happens starting around 2015/2016 and onward after that, so that’s where I started with the sequel.”
He added: “This section of the sequel would be animation and then, in theory, should it happen, there would be a gigantic time jump of 28 years or so, and where the actors, should they want to play their roles live and in the flesh, that would be wonderful, too. So we’ll see what happens.”
Kelly previously released The Donnie Darko Book, which explored the making of the original movie, but he’s apparently been trying to crack a proper sequel for more than two decades. Rights complications, changing parent companies and different studios have all played a role in keeping the project from moving forward.
The scope hasn’t made things any easier. “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 says.
“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.”
As Kelly continued developing the mythology, he realized there was too much important material between Donnie’s death and the later portion of his planned sequel to simply skip over it. That realization eventually became The Philosophy of Time Travel.
He explained: “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.
“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 is keeping plenty of the plot secret, but he has revealed some fascinating details about where the story goes. The characters who experienced the tangent universe are left trying to understand the bizarre 28-day shared experience from the original movie, and their search for answers eventually brings them together.
Kelly offered the following description: “I think there’s a lot of surprises when you realize who the characters really are in the reality of Southern California, how they were drawn into this collective dream.
“They were drawn into this thing called the tangent universe, this lunar month, this dream that lasted for 28 days that they collectively all experienced together, and they’re sort of all trying to piece it together.
“And they form this sort of support group that turns into a cult, in a way, and they all come together. There’s a lot of surprises about who they are, and I think for me it was really gratifying to see all the characters start to interact with each other in response to Donnie’s death, and they all become really close friends.
“And there are characters who are villainous in the movie who you realize in real life they’re not villainous at all; they might have done horrible things in the dream of the first movie, but when you meet them in the reality of the sequel, they’re trying to process why they did horrible things in this dream, and they’re coming to terms with it and they’re analyzing it just like the fans are analyzing the movie.
“So I just I wanted to write a really gratifying part for all the actors. And that goes down the line even to some of the actors who only appear in one or two scenes. You’ll see that they have really fleshed out narrative arcs and everything.”
That sounds like a pretty wild way to revisit the original film because it potentially changes how we understand several of its characters. People we knew as villains inside the tangent universe may be completely different in reality, and they’re now forced to deal with memories of things they did inside that shared experience.
The novel itself is presented through found documents, including alternating material from Donnie’s parents, Rose and Eddie Darko, played by McDonnell and Osborne in the film.
They’re documenting the strange events surrounding their family while pursuing separate investigations into why their son died and what actually happened to everyone involved.
Despite Kelly’s hopes of eventually reuniting the original cast, he hasn’t formally asked any of them to return yet. Instead, he wants the book to make the case for the movies.
“I never want to put pressure on anyone or make anyone feel like they have to give me an answer. 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.”
Kelly continued: “I love my cast. I would love to reunite with all these wonderful actors, and now it’s just sort of up for the marketplace to decide, and that marketplace includes a global fan base and our wonderful cast of actors, a whole bunch of new characters who are new to the story, who can be played by new actors, and we have all this wonderful technology that didn’t exist five years ago.”
There’s obviously no guarantee Kelly will get to make all of these movies, but the fact that he’s spent years mapping out a much larger Donnie Darko story makes The Philosophy of Time Travel especially interesting. Kelly sees it as the launching point for the continuation he’s been trying to make for decades.
The book will also be the first official release from Range Literary Publishing, the author-focused publishing imprint of Range Media Partners.
Range Literary Publishing chief Jeff Speich said: “We are thrilled to partner with Richard to bring the highly anticipated sequel book ‘Donnie Darko’ into the world. Richard is an extraordinary storyteller who created a universe far ahead of its time, and the film has rightfully achieved iconic cult status.
“Audiences have been eagerly awaiting a follow-up story to his original work for over twenty-five years. It is a true privilege for this title to be the first book released by Range Literary Publishing.”
I’m excited to enter this wonderfully weird world again. The original movie has lived in my head since I first saw it in theaters, and the idea of learning what happened immediately after Donnie’s death, while also opening the door to a story set decades later, is incredibly intriguing.
If Kelly actually gets to turn this into an animated film and eventually develop a live-action sequel, things could get wonderfully strange.
For now, The Philosophy of Time Travel is our next trip down the rabbit hole, and I’m ready to see just how mad this world has become.
Source: Variety