Donnie Darko’s Richard Kelly to write and direct Rod Serling biopic

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Richard Kelly has had a bumpy directorial career, and he's only three feature films into it. After his debut DONNIE DARKO became an instant cult classic, his second film SOUTHLAND TALES was only warmly received by a cult much smaller than DARKO's, and then his third film THE BOX was a box office failure. Ten years after THE BOX, Kelly may finally be returning to the director's chair, and it's for a project that will grab the attention of many: he is working on a biopic about The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling.

Geeks WorldWide were the first to catch word of the Serling project, and Collider's Jeff Sneider has since confirmed that this is indeed something that's in the works.

Kelly is writing the screenplay for the biopic and will be directing the film, which he hopes to get into production in 2020. Mandalay Pictures' Jason Michael Berman is producing with Kevin Turen, Matthew Lindner, and Brian Young.

It's intriguing that Kelly wants to bring the life story of The Twilight Zone's creator to the screen, because THE BOX was based on a Richard Matheson story that had previously been turned into an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1986.

As Sneider describes it, 

Serling happened to have a fascinating life. He grew up outside of Syracuse, New York as the class clown, though he eventually matured enough to write for his high school newspaper. Immediately after graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and trained as a paratrooper. Since he was raised Jewish, he had hoped to fight Hitler and the German Army, though he was sent west to fight in the Philippines, where he saw death all around him each day. Though he was honored with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, Serling’s experience in the military haunted him and had a profound effect on his later work. After being discharged, Serling attended Antioch College, where he began writing and performing in radio shows on campus. At school, he had a reputation as a ladies’ man as well as a daredevil, as he took on the dangerous job of testing parachutes.

Following his radio days, Serling moved into television, writing for a local station in Cincinnati before going out on his own. He sold several scripts, but resented the compromises that network sponsors and censors forced him to make, so he decided to create his own show, The Twilight Zone. It won numerous awards and drew rave reviews from critics and audiences alike, but its ratings remained modest, and he ultimately sold the rights to CBS. Serling was also an antiwar activist who frequently lobbied for racial equality, both of which were recurring themes in his writing.

I'm totally on board for the idea of a Rod Serling biopic, but I have to admit that I'm uncertain about Kelly's involvement. Although I love DONNIE DARKO (theatrical cut, not the director's cut), I could never get into SOUTHLAND TALES, and I honestly can't remember what I thought about THE BOX because I haven't watched it since it was in theatres. What makes me most uncertain is the fact that Kelly has written a biopic before, Tony Scott's DOMINO, which was based on the life of bounty hunter Domino Harvey but went completely off the rails into madness. I hope the Serling biopic will be less insane and more true to life.