To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Richard Kelly’s surreal cult classic Donnie Darko, The Ringer has compiled an oral history of the movie that reveals Christopher Nolan’s integral role in getting the movie into theaters. When Donnie Darko premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2001, it was overshadowed by Nolan’s amnesia thriller Memento, so Kelly had a tough time finding a distributor. Four months after the Sundance premiere, the director still hadn’t secured a distribution deal for his film and it was looking like it might never make it to multiplexes.
At the same time, Nolan was finding massive success with Memento. His future wife Emma Thomas had passed on the script to Aaron Ryder, a friend of hers who was working at Newmarket Films, and he loved it so much that he agreed to finance production for $4.5 million. When Nolan similarly failed to land a distribution deal, Newmarket decided to just distribute it themselves. Thanks to positive word of mouth, Memento became a small hit with a $25 million North American box office haul, so Nolan was comfortably in the good grace of Newmarket executives.
Despite Memento’s success with a complicated nonlinear narrative and dark themes, Donnie Darko still couldn’t find a home with the same elements. No one wanted to pay to distribute a movie they didn’t understand and Kelly was pressured to make the movie a half-hour shorter. The director told The Ringer that things were “looking really grim” for his debut feature.
Ryder decided to take another chance on Donnie Darko and arranged a screening with a few other Newmarket executives and also invited Nolan and Thomas along. The duo had a lot of clout with Newmarket’s top brass following the success of Memento. According to Kelly, “When the lights came up, Chris and his wife both turned to the Newmarket executives, Chris Ball and Will Tyrer, and they both looked over at them and they nodded. They were like, ‘You guys should distribute this.’”
Based on Nolan’s affinity for the movie, Newmarket decided to pull the trigger on distributing Donnie Darko themselves. They initially wanted to go straight to home media, but Drew Barrymore – who produced the movie through her production company Flower Films in addition to co-starring – managed to convince them to give the movie a theatrical release.
Unfortunately, by the time that Donnie Darko finally did get a theatrical run around the Halloween season in 2001, the 9/11 attacks had taken place. This put a movie that revolves around a plane crash – and featured one heavily in its trailers – in a very awkward position. So, Donnie Darko flopped at the box office and wouldn’t be considered a hit until it found a cult audience years later. But if it hadn’t been for Christopher Nolan, it might not have been released at all.
Source: The Ringer