Richard Kelly reveals surprising story behind 'Donnie Darko'

Richard Kelly looked back on Donnie Darko after 25 years.

As the 2001’s psychological sci-fi thriller, Donnie Darko’s 25th anniversary is on the horizon, the iconic movie’s director and writer, Richard Kelly revealed the film's initial struggles before finding its popularity.

The director told People Magazine that it had “a really hard time achieving distribution.”

“I don’t wanna sugarcoat it. It was really pretty brutal,” he added.

Richard credited the filmmaking duo, Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas, and called them “guardian angels,” and they helped persuade New Market Films.

Which was responsible for “distributed Memento to great success” and it gave the film “a tiny theatrical release.”

It is worth noting here that Donnie Darko was released in theaters on October 26, 2001, and it was directed by Richard when he was just 25-years-old.

Recalling the time, Richard said, “It was a global devastation where no one even wanted to think about going to see a movie or distributing a movie, or you’re marketing and promoting a movie... it just seemed like something not even worthy of discussion or effort in the aftermath of such a tragedy.”

He further recalled that the film “limped onto about 50-something screens,” in October.

The filmmaker went on to say, “I breathed a sigh of relief that we got to 50 screens, that the movie didn’t get sent straight to home video, because that was a time before streaming where if a movie went straight to home video, it would not have been reviewed in the big newspapers.”

Adding, “We had just barely made it, and I remember just feeling relieved that the movie had gotten itself out there theatrically, and I wasn’t gonna complain.”

“After all that had happened, I wasn’t gonna feel sorry for myself or complain about anything just because we had made it to the finish line and the best that we could,” he adds. “Sometimes movies just have headwinds. Sometimes the wind is at your back, sometimes the wind is blowing in your face, and it’s just the nature of Hollywood, and it’s the nature of the movie gods, as they say. We were just having to navigate those headwinds,” he further noted.

Despite this Richard believed that he “had something special.”

Moreover, that was the reason he “fought so hard to direct it myself and to hold onto the kind of integrity of the screenplay and all the things that I was getting pressure to change,” Richard revealed.

He noted, “I fought really hard to hold onto that, because I knew we had something special. I could have never predicted that it would’ve gone this far and lasted this long, and we’d be doing a big re-release 25 years later that I would’ve written a novel I’d always planned in the back of my mind that there was a gigantic sequel, like a blockbuster sequel.”

“Never would’ve thought that we would’ve gotten to this point.”

“Because there’s just so much continued enthusiasm for the movie, it puts a fire inside of me to try and live up to it, to try and make sure that anything I do moving forward is hopefully at the same level or close to or at the same level of ambition and complexity and longevity,” the film’s director further explained.

Expressing his gratitude Richard shared his hopes for the future of Donnie Darko, stating, “I’m very moved and appreciative of people caring about this movie, and I just wanna protect it moving forward and hopefully develop it again into something worthwhile where people can see how much more there is in this world.”

However, speaking about the film, he said, “It’s a big, complicated science fiction story that you can really dive into and explore.”

Richard continued, “It takes your mind on a journey when you watch it, because there’s so much going on in the story. And on that journey, you know, you have these wonderful performances. You’ve got so many wonderful actors, and you’ve got some really cool music, and I think the visuals hold up.”

“I’m grateful that we were able to weave the whole package together in a way that’s memorable,” he further added.