Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly is reworking his 2006 film Southland Tales into a six-hour director’s cut. The film stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Dwayne Johnson, Sean William Scott, Justin Timberlake, and Mandy Moore. Southland Tales premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and received so much negative feedback that the studio reworked the film. Unfortunately, the reworked film was received just as poorly, seen as an unfinished version of something much bigger.
Since then, Kelly has released prequel comics to coincide with the film. There is also a prequel film in the works that will contain both live-action and animated elements. All of this comes ahead of the film’s release on Blu-ray on January 26. That will come with a new digital transfer and will also be the first time the Cannes Film Festival cut will be available for viewing. Kelly revealed that’s not all he has in store for this passion project, though.
Kelly revealed to ComicBook that he’s working on a longer cut of the film, one that is six hours, to be exact. Kelly says the original Southland Tales is one-third of the original story and that his six-hour cut will be six episodic-like segments that flesh out the entire story. Kelly wants to present this cut in two epic movies that will be about three hours long each. Kelly says he has done a lot of work in adapting the graphic novels into screenplays and hopes to shoot new footage for this cut.
There’s been a significant amount of work done on revisiting Southland Tales. I’m actually putting together a polish on what I’m putting together, which is a polish on it, which is using the graphic novel prequels that were published….You’ll see in the existing version of Southland Tales is chapters 4-6, so there’s basically a prequel companion film that could, if it’s made, theoretically continue onward into an expanded version of the existing film with new footage, and the most ideal version it would basically be a six-hour film, split in two, and within each film there’s 3 chapters. So it’s like a six-chapter story, but it would be presented in two epic movies, like a big double feature, that in an ideal world could exist on a streaming platform of something that is more amenable to these sort of long-form stories.
Kelly’s plan is reminiscent of Zack Snyder’s plan, currently in its final stages, to revisit Justice League. Snyder left the film after a family tragedy, and Joss Whedon took over on that film. After a lengthy social media campaign, Snyder was brought back on board to complete his vision. While Kelly has had no social media campaign, Southland Tales has a devoted cult fan base vocal enough to make their desire for a director’s cut known.
While Kelly and a small group of supporters have always seen Southland Tales‘ potential, it’s unclear how Kelly would get this project off the ground. Kelly’s last film was 2009’s The Box, another strange movie that failed to garner his past films’ support. Luckily for Kelly, there’s a desire now more than ever for niche content that satisfies a small but dedicated fanbase. That most accurately describes Southland Tales‘ fanbase, and Kelly may be able to pull it off. Seeing as he sounds very passionate about the idea, he should not be underestimated.
