Screendaily.com is reporting a sequel to Donnie Darko is in the works.

The UK-based sales company Velvet Octopus will be launching sales in Cannes for S. Darko, the sequel to the hit 2001 film, Donnie Darko. Fox has already taken the highly sought-after North American rights.

Actress Daviegh Chase reprises her film role as Donnie’s younger sister. The rest of the cast for S. Darko also includes Ed Westwick, Briana Evigan and Justin Chatwin.

Ash Shah’s Silver Nitrate and Newmarket Capital are producing the film, whereas Los Angeles-based Chris Fisher is slated to direct. The budget is rumored to be somewhere around $10 million dollars. Richard Kelly will not be involved this time around.

The events in S. Darko take place seven years after the first film (and Donnie’s death). Samantha Darko and her friend are now 18 years old and on a roadtrip to LA when they are haunted by strange visions.

Director Fisher says he plans to stay true to the film. He reports, “I am a great admirer of Richard Kelly’s film and hope to create a similar world of blurred fantasy and reality.”

The movies S. Darko starts shooting May 18.

Source: Screendaily.com.

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Oops: In one of the classrooms, there appears a poster of the solar system. This poster shows a picture of the planet Neptune that was taken by the space shuttle Voyager 2. The movie takes place in 1988, but this picture was not actually taken until one year later in 1989.

OOps: In the film, Jim Cunningham claims to be unmarried, yet he stills wears a wedding band. Richard Kelly claims this was done intentionally to show that Jim was untrustworthy and deceiving.

Oops: In the scene where Donnie and his dad are in the car, the passenger side mirror is visible outside of the window. When the camera switches back and forth between Donnie and his dad, the mirror changes angles.

Oops: When Donnie discovers the gun in his parent’s closet, the hammer is not cocked and the saftey is on. For this model of gun (.45), it is not possible to turn the saftey on unless the hammer is already cocked. There is also some kind of visible screw on the prop gun which does not exist on it’s real life counterpart.

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Oops: The movie takes place in 1988, but the vehicles have late 1990’s style license plates on them.

Crew visibile: When Donnie and his father are having a conversation in the car - right before they almost run Grandma Death over - a clapperboard is briefly reflected in the car window behind Donnie’s Dad’s head.

Oops: At one point in the film, when Donnie grabs the keys to the car, there is a Blockbuster card visible. The card shown is not one the Blockbuster style membership card from 1988 - in fact, it is a much more recent one. Richard Kelly said this was done on purpose, as Blockbuster had some sort of endorsement deal for the film.

Oops: When speaking to Donnie, Professor Monnitoff refers to the then-current 1988 edition of the book A Brief History In Time (Stephen Hawking) as he suggests wormholes as a plausible method for time travel. Ironically, this chapter on wormholes was not added to Hawking’s book until the edition released in 1998 (ten years after the events of the movie).

Oops: The copies of the book “Watership Down” display the cover design as copyrighted 1996, even though the film is actually set in 1988.

Oops: In the first sequence of the school scene when we see shots of the movie characters, a girl is carrying a Dickies brand book bag. This model wasn’t introduced by Dickies until the late 1990’s.

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At one point, Rose Darko is shown reading the book It by Stephen King. In that book, children in a small town are terrorized by a sinister clown. Later in the movie, we see an encounter between Donnie and a clown.

The dance performance in the movie was actually performed to the song “West End Girls” by the Pet Shop Boys. Due to budget issues, the song had to replaced by Duran Duran’s “Notorious” while the film was in post-production.

When casting for the role of Donnie’s sister, it came to Richard Kelly’s attention that Maggie Gyllenhaal (relatively unknown at this point) would be available for the shoot. The agent who proposed her casting reminded Richard Kelly of Maggie’s scene in the movie Cecil B. DeMented, in which she drank urine. Even though Kelly was hesitant towards the idea, he did like the way she drank urine in the movie. He also knew he wouldn’t have to work hard at creating the sibling rivalry between her and her real-life brother Jake Gyllenhaal.

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Jim Cunningham says drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex are “instruments of fear.” In the film, Donnie smokes cigarettes, consumes alcohol, and engages in premarital sex. The climax of the film occurs after Donnie surrenders to all three of these temptations.

When Donnie informs Gretchen he burned down a house, they are walking in front of Jim Cunningham’s house. The Life Line Exercise Card that Donnie reads is about a girl who finds a lost wallet. Later in the movie, Donnie finds Jim Cunningham’s apparently lost wallet on the sidewalk outside Jim’s mansion.

In the “Cunning Visions” video, Jim Cunningham (later exposted to be a child molestor) pats a child on his behind. The young boy at the assembly who wants to learn how to fight is, in fact, the same boy who appears in Jim Cunningham’s video.

The video game Donnie plays at the arcade is the Sega car racing game “Out Run” (released in 1986).

This film was voted #9 in Film4’s “50 Films To See Before You Die”.

The film Donnie Darko and Stephen King’s It both feature a bully who uses a knife as a weapon. The bully in Donnie Darko is named Seth Devlin. His surname is a reference to the devil. The sticker inside Devlin’s school locker says: “What would Satan do?”

The film has many Stephen King references. According to the director’s commentary, the book which Eddie Darko is reading while in bed is Stephen King’s “The Tommyknockers”. Earlier in the movie, Eddie’s wife Rose is shown reading Stephen King’s “It”.

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There are 28 scenes in the director’s cut of the move. Frank tells Donnie the world will end in 28 days 06 hours 42 minutes and 12 seconds.

The movie takes place in the year 1988. Frank tells Donnie the world will end in 28 days, 06 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. If you add these numbers, you will get the sum of 88. When Samantha Darko asks when she will be able to have kids, Donnie says: “Not until 8th grade.” Donnie tells his therapist that his dog Callie died when he was eight. According to the TV reporter, the fire at Jim Cunningham’s mansion was extinguished “sometime after 8:00 last night.” The climax of Donnie Darko occurs one week prior to the 1988 US presidential election. George Bush was elected on November 8, 1988 11/08/88.

According to Richard Kelly, the Man in the Red Jogging Suit (seen at random points in the movie) is an agent from the FAA. Apparently, they were so confused by the jet engine mystery that they sent agents to monitor the family members.

The Mystery Woman, seen during Sparkle Motion’s talent show performance, was a talent scout from the show “Star Search”.

Donnie Darko comes in at number five in the list of Australia’s Top 10 favorite movies.

The scene of the bike ride to Grandma Death’s house is an homage to Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Drew Barrymore also starred in that movie.

The first scene in the movie is an tribute to Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ.

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The skeleton costume that Donnie wears at his party is the same worn by Johnny and his gang during the costume party scene in The Karate Kid movie.

Richard Kelly modeled the tone of the movie after Stanley Kubrick’s movie Lolita, which was released in 1962. To follow this theme, Elizabeth Darko (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is dressed as Vivian Darkbloom (Marianne Stone) from Lolita at the Halloween party.

One of the deleted scenes shows Donnie’s English class discussing Richard Adams’s novel Watership Down. The plot of this novel involves a rabbit who tells of the impending destruction of the rabbit warren. This scene was later included in the movie (and not shown as deleted scene) when the director’s cut was released onto DVD.

During certain shots of the Halloween Party - in the background the sound of a wolf howling can be heard. It is the same howl from the werewolf in the film An American Werewolf in London.

When Donnie’s mother is calling home to say they’ll be on the red-eye flight, the airport announcement in the background says that Flight 2806 is boarding at gate 42 and leaving at 12 AM. In theory, this is the flight they’re taking, and also a reference to the 28:06:42:12 countdown prophecy that Frank tells Donnie.

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Richard Kelly’s original choice for the music to be played over the final sequence was U2’s “MLK.” Since they ran into difficulties obtaining the rights to that particular song, it was decided to use Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” instead. The song was originally authored by Tears for Fears.

Richard Kelly wanted Tim Robbins to play the part of Donnie’s father.

The black-and-white poster in Donnie’s room (an eye reflecting a skull) is a reproduction of an etching by M.C. Escher.

The DVD contains several Easter Eggs (hidden items). Two are visible in the “Philosophy of Time Travel” book in the Special Features section. On each of the appendix pages, press the up arrow on your remote and then press enter. For Appendix A, the viewer gets a deleted scene about the flooding of the school. For Appendix B, the viewer gets an alternate trailer for the movie. Another can be found after selecting the “Cunning Visions” menu screen. At the bottom of the screen, highlight the Special Features menu entry, press the right arrow on your remote to highlight the icon, and then press enter. This will give you access to a secret web site gallery.

The original poster art for the movie had used an Arabic-style font, but this was changed to a more standard Time New Roman font for the video release. This is because the movie was released right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. However, the font remains unchanged in the film.

Jason Schwartzman was originally slated to play Donnie Darko. However, due to scheduling conflicts, he was replaced by Jake Gyllenhaal.

The first edit of the film ran a whopping 165 minutes (2 hours, 45 minutes). The director’s cut of the film is similar to the version that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001.

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In the scene at the party someone is shown jumping on a trampoline wearing a Ronald Reagan mask. This is taken from a photo of the journalist Hunter S. Thompson wearing a Reagan mask while he’s jumping on a trampoline.

During conversations with his therapist, Donnie refers to the TV show Married with Children and - more specifically, Christina Applegate. The script orginally called for Donnie’s fantasies to be centered around Alyssa Milano. This had to be changed when Richard Kelly was denied the legal rights to reference Milano in this context.

In the theater scene, Richard Kelly originally intended to have Donnie and Gretchen going to see C.H.U.D. However, there were problems with researching exactly who owned the rights to that movie, so Sam Raimi came to the rescue by allowing the film to use and distort footage from The Evil Dead free of charge.

Oddly enough, Noah Wyle’s character, Professor Kenneth Monnitoff, is seen eating hard candy in some scenes because Wyle simply decided his character would be diabetic.

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The movie had a very rough time finding a US distributor. Since the film embodied several different genres and tones, distributors were extremely confused by the movie’s message, and didn’t really know how to market it. Kelly also claims that Donnie Darko was very close to premiering on the Starz network, but Newmarket Films picked up the movie for theatrical distribution.

Despite rumors, Richard Kelly insists that none of the characters in this film are actually based upon USC students or their teachers.

The movie was shot in 28 days, which is ironic because this is exactly the time span of the movie itself. It was filmed on a budget of under US$5 million dollars.

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