Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | April 2, 2026
The Case of the Disappearing Actress is a popular semi-regular feature around these parts, but directors go missing too — and few vanishing acts have been as confounding or as genuinely sad as that of Richard Kelly.
Kelly was 26 years old when Donnie Darko was released in October 2001. It bombed theatrically — recouping barely a third of its $4.5 million budget — but on home video and DVD, it became one of the defining cult films of its generation. It launched Jake Gyllenhaal’s career. Countless Xers and millennials bought into the cult. It was weird and creepy and a little bit nonsensical, but it felt so alive and original. And Kelly had reportedly received just $9,000 to write and direct it.
Richard Kelly suddenly became a very in-demand director.
What followed was Southland Tales, an apocalyptic Los Angeles satire featuring Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Justin Timberlake, and Mandy Moore — among roughly 400 other people — that premiered at Cannes in 2006. It did not go well. The crowd booed. Kelly described it as “a very painful experience on a lot of levels.” That rough cut ran 160 minutes and hadn’t yet been completed; Kelly had stopped editing when Cannes accepted the film, and he couldn’t finish the visual effects in time. Sony acquired it for U.S. distribution, Kelly cut it down to 145 minutes, and the film limped into theaters like a horse with three busted legs in 2007. It grossed $374,743 worldwide.
Southland Tales is not without its defenders, and while it hasn’t achieved the cult status of Donnie Darko, the passage of time has been weirdly generous to it. Arrow Video gave it a full restoration and released both the theatrical cut and the Cannes cut on Blu-ray in 2021. Cast member Lou Taylor Pucci (what happened to him?) recently called Kelly’s vision of a fascist America in Southland Tales “quite prescient.” He ain’t wrong.
But landing another gig after that wasn’t going to be easy.
In 2009 he made his third feature, The Box, based on a Richard Matheson short story and starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden. It was meant to be his commercial pivot — his “I can make a normal movie” proof of concept. It received a rare F CinemaScore from audiences, and grossed $33 million worldwide against a $30 million budget. It has few defenders. I am one of them. It wasn’t a great movie, but I loved that Richard Kelly thought it was his idea of a “normal movie.”
The Box, alas, effectively ended his career as a working director. He has not directed a feature since. I am sure that the very messy, very bad S. Darko, with which Kelly had zero involvement, didn’t help.
Kelly’s career downfall was not for lack of trying. A thriller set in 2014 Manhattan, to be shot partly in 3D motion capture — canceled. Corpus Christi, a Texas-set film to be produced by Eli Roth — canceled, due to “financial and casting problems.” A true crime thriller called Amicus, starring James Gandolfini — canceled when Gandolfini died in 2013. Kelly has described himself as a man who keeps hitting roadblocks, who “wishes he could have made more films.” He’s also talked about wanting to return to the Southland Tales universe — the existing film was always conceived as the back half of a six-chapter saga — though that, too, remains stuck in the amber of development hell.
Over the years, Kelly claims to have many different projects in various stages of development. In fact, one was scheduled to shoot in the fall of 2025. It’s unclear if that ever happened, but it’s unlikely. Unfortunately, it seems that Richard Kelly’s career has been in development hell since 2009, and it’s unclear if the director will ever find his way back. But you’d think with a studio like A24 out there, someone would give him a shot.
