A book sequel to the 2001 cult classic film Donnie Darko will be released later this year from filmmaker Richard Kelly and Range Literary Publishing. Variety reported that The Philosophy of Time Travel, an approximately 800-page book, "will take place in 1988, in the immediate aftermath of the original film, which famously ended with the death of Jake Gyllenhaal's titular Donnie Darko, a Southern California teen who spends the better part of the movie in a dreamlike state while anticipating the end of the world."
Written by Kelly over the past 10 years, The Philosophy of Time Travel will appear around the time of the 25th anniversary of Donnie Darko October 26. A specific sale date will be announced in the coming months.
Produced by Flower Films, Donnie Darko premiered at Sundance in 2001 and was distributed theatrically by Newmarket Films later that year. The cast also included Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, Katharine Ross, Patrick Swayze, Noah Wyle, and Seth Rogen.
Kelly said the book sequel is the first step in a larger plan to make multiple Donnie Darko film sequels. His goal is to have this novel adapted into an animated/motion-capture movie and then continue to the story with a live-action project, Variety noted.
"I've kept in touch with all the cast over the years," Kelly said. "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."