In an age where apparently any financially-disappointing film can get additional millions of dollars for a director’s cut and any cult film can get a sequel, it’s no surprise that Richard Kelly would be interested in revisiting the underrated financial disaster that was “Southland Tales.”
After his cult-hit “Donnie Darko,” Kelly made an ambitious pseudo-post-apocalyptical satire with an insane cast that included Dwayne Johnson, Mandy Moore, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Justin Timberlake. Though the film was a horrible financial disaster, Kelly has a sequel script ready to go, and he wants Dwayne Johnson to return. In a new interview with EW to discuss the new 2K restoration of the film, Kelly acknowledges that Johnson is a bigger movie star than he was back in 2005. “Yes, I realize that. That’s a whole other discussion that I’m not able to completely address. But I would love more than anything to work with Dwayne again on this project and with all the actors,” Kelly said. “It’s just a question of, is there a way to figure that out? I certainly hope so.”
Kelly goes on to explain his very complicated plan to make a prequel, which he’s been hinting at since last year (and still makes little sense). Still, what matters is that Kelly is not giving up anytime soon.
“I’ve worked on quite a bit of new ‘Southland Tales’ material and we’ve been doing a lot of work to try and figure out how we could pull it off,” Kelly adds. “I’m not going to ever give up on it. I’m going to keep pushing for it for the rest of my life or until everyone gets too old. I believe in the project and I feel there’s a chance for us to really do something much more exciting with it, given the streaming platforms and the long-form storytelling possibilities that exist now, where people are able to have a bigger canvas. We’ll see what happens.”