As one of the most commercially successful directors of all-time that’s been pushing the technological boundaries of cinema for over 30 years, when James Cameron talks, people tend to listen, especially when he’s spent the majority of that time silencing his doubters.
Industry analysts were shocked when it was first revealed that Cameron’s sequel to his low budget thriller The Terminator was going to be Hollywood’s maiden $100 million production, and the first to integrate a fully computer-generated character, only for Judgment Day to kick off the CGI revolution and go down in history as one of the greatest blockbusters that will ever be made.
Meanwhile, the spiralling budgets and constant delays that plagued both Titanic and Avatar had many people predicting failure at the time, only for both of them to become the biggest box office hits the business had ever seen and win a combined total of fourteen Academy Awards from 23 nominations. The point is, the man knows what he’s talking about, which is why Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly took it to heart when Cameron told him to keep working on his planned sequel to the 2001 smash hit, which is exactly what he’s been doing.
“I started explaining it all to him and he pointed at me and said, ‘You should keep working on that’. It made me think there was really something big, something epic that could be done. So that’s what I’ve been focusing on.”
Kelly hasn’t been shy in blasting S. Darko any chance he gets given that the 2009 follow-up was made without his involvement, but things appear to be markedly different this time around. Talks of a return to the world of his breakout feature have been floating around for years, but based on the multitude of comments he’s been making in recent interviews, the 45 year-old seems more intent than ever to bring the Donnie Darko universe back to the screen in some fashion.