# Richard Kelly (filmmaker)

James Richard Kelly is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He wrote and directed the films Donnie Darko (2001), Southland Tales (2006), and The Box (2009).

## Early life

Kelly grew up in Midlothian, Virginia, where he attended Midlothian High School and graduated in 1993. When he was a child, his father worked for NASA on the Mars Viking Lander program. He won a scholarship to the University of Southern California to study at the USC School of Cinema-Television where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He made two short films at USC, The Goodbye Place and Visceral Matter, before graduating in 1997.
Kelly spoke of viewing the film Brazil with author Robert K. Elder in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life:
   I think the greatest thing I learned from Terry is that every frame is worthy of attention to detail. Every frame is worthy of being frozen in time and then thrown on a wall like an oil painting, and if you work hard on every frame, the meaning of your film becomes deeper, more enhanced.

## Film career

Donnie Darko (2001) is Kelly's first feature and was nominated for 21 awards, winning eleven. It later made #2 on Empire magazine's list of the 50 greatest independent films of all time, behind Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.
In 2005, Kelly wrote the screenplay for the Tony Scott-directed film, Domino. Kelly has said: "That was a wonderful experience. I wrote that for Tony Scott. That was Tony Scott's very personal project that he had spent eight years developing with Domino Harvey, a close friend of his and almost like a daughter to him. He had spent years trying to tell her story and so that for me, it was an honor for me to get to work with Tony and to write that script for him and to design this really elaborate puzzle for him to tell her story. So that was just a privilege."
Kelly has written numerous scripts that have not been produced, among them adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Louis Sachar's Holes.
His fourth film and second feature, Southland Tales, a rough cut of which screened in competition at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, was released November 16, 2007, and stars Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Kevin Smith and Miranda Richardson.
In 2008, Kelly's production company Darko Entertainment announced that it was producing the adaptation of the bestselling book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell with director Bob Gosse. The book's author Tucker Max detailed Kelly's involvement in the process on his blog.
After the release of The Box, he said he was working on a thriller "set in Manhattan in the year 2014. We hope to shoot the movie in 3-D, and part of the movie would be filmed using full CGI motion capture." In 2011, he announced that he was writing and directing Corpus Christi, a Texas-set film to be produced by Eli Roth. The production was cancelled due to financial and casting problems. Kelly said he would instead focus on a true crime thriller titled Amicus, starring James Gandolfini, whose death in 2013 prevented that.
In an interview with PopMatters magazine in 2017, Kelly said in regard to doing an official sequel to Donnie Darko: "I'm open to doing something much bigger and longer and more ambitious that could be a new story," Kelly said and then added, "We'll see what happens. I have a lot of stuff that I'm working on and it's ambitious and it's expensive and we'll see what happens." Regarding the 2009 Donnie Darko sequel S. Darko, Kelly has said: "I had nothing to do with it. And I hate it when people try and blame me or hold me responsible for it because I had no [involvement]. I don't control the underlying rights to [the Donnie Darko franchise]. I had to relinquish them when I was 24 years old. I hate when people ask me about that because I've never seen it and I never will, so… don't ask me about the sequel."
As of 2025, Kelly claimed to have ten different projects in the works, all in various stages of development. "I'm waiting to see which project the movie Gods will bless with the green light." He is reportedly set to direct his first film in 15 years, according to an issue of Production Weekly. While no title, casting or plot details were revealed, a fall 2025 shoot is currently planned.

## Reception

In 2016, filmmaker Kevin Smith said of Kelly: "He is insanely creative and is not unlike Christopher Nolan. But Nolan wound up in the Warner Bros. system where he got special handling, and he got a lot of money to make huge art films like Inception. Richard can be one of our greatest filmmakers. He is right now, but just a lot of people don't realize it. He's still a kid, and someone needs to Nolan that kid."

## Filmography
### Feature films

| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
| 2001 | Donnie Darko | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2005 | Domino | No | Yes | No |
| 2006 | Southland Tales | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2009 | The Box | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Producer only
* World's Greatest Dad (2009)
* I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2009)
* Operation: Endgame (2010)

### Short films

| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
| 1996 | The Goodbye Place | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also sound designer |
| 1997 | Visceral Matter | Yes | Yes | No | |

## Awards and nominations

| Year | Award | Category | Title | Result |
| 2001 | Sundance Film Festival | Grand Jury Prize | Donnie Darko | Nominated |
| 2001 | Sitges Film Festival | Best Film | Donnie Darko | Nominated |
| 2002 | Imagine Film Festival | Silver Scream Award | Donnie Darko | Won |
| 2002 | Online Film Critics Society | Breakthrough Filmmaker | Donnie Darko | Nominated |
| 2002 | Independent Spirit Awards | Best First Feature | Donnie Darko | Nominated |
| 2002 | Independent Spirit Awards | Best First Screenplay | Donnie Darko | Nominated |
| 2002 | Chicago Film Critics Association | Most Promising Director | Most Promising Director | Nominated |
| 2006 | Cannes Film Festival | Palme d'Or | Southland Tales | Nominated |