How ‘Donnie Darko’ Finally Reached Mexican Theaters 25 Years Later — and Led to a Local Box-Office Phenom

Exclusive: Writer/director Richard Kelly and the distribution folks behind the cult sci-fi thriller's first-ever Mexican release tell IndieWire how, and why, they brought the film to Latin America.

Over the 25 years since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, “Donnie Darko” has become one of the defining cult films of the new millennium and one of the independent features that helped shape the cinematic landscape of the 2000s. Yet despite its international cult following, Richard Kelly’s debut feature never received a commercial theatrical release in Mexico.

That is where Alondra Camacho enters the story. A Mexico City-based cinephile and journalist who founded the distribution company Avena Cine, Camacho decided to use the film’s 25th anniversary as an opportunity to accomplish something no distributor or exhibition chain had managed before: Bring “Donnie Darko” to Mexican theaters.

According to Camacho, the idea emerged late last year during a conversation with a friend at the Cineteca Nacional. “Why don’t we bring something that we genuinely love, something we would enjoy ourselves, and that people haven’t had the chance to experience on the big screen?” she told IndieWire. “I immediately said, ‘Why not “Donnie Darko”?’ It has been my favorite film since I was a teenager and throughout my years studying cinema.”

What followed was a search to identify the film’s rightsholders. Along the way, Camacho contacted the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA), which oversees the film’s restoration and exhibition rights in the United States. AGFA eventually directed her toward the holders of the international rights.

During that process, she met producer and screenwriter Edgar San Juan at the Morelia International Film Festival. Through his company Film Tank, San Juan joined the initiative and began working alongside Camacho to bring the film to Mexican audiences. The conversations eventually reached Miguel Rivera, head of distribution at Cinépolis, Mexico’s largest exhibition chain, who suggested expanding the release beyond Mexico and into the rest of Latin America.

“Following their recommendations, we expanded the rights not only for Mexico but for all of Latin America, and we also extended the licensing period,” San Juan said. “We made a tremendous effort to ensure the film could reach those territories through Cinépolis while also remaining available in essential cultural spaces in Mexico, including film clubs, independent cinemas, the Cineteca Nacional, and the rest of cinetecas across the country. We felt it was a remarkable film, a masterpiece, and it seemed unfortunate that Mexican audiences had never had the opportunity to experience it in theaters.”

The success of “Donnie Darko” is particularly striking within the context of Mexico’s exhibition landscape, where repertory cinema rarely receives commercial theatrical distribution. Throughout 2025, only six restored films reached Mexican screens, with most limited to the Cineteca Nacional and a handful of independent venues in Mexico City: Leos Carax’s “The Lovers on the Bridge,” Suzana Amaral’s “The Hour of the Star,” Emir Kusturica’s “Underground,” David Lynch’s “Lost Highway,” Vera Chytilová’s “Daisies,” and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s “Memories of Underdevelopment.”

Given the state of repertory distribution in Mexico, the film’s box office performance has come as a surprise since its April 16 launch date in Mexico.

“The results were far bigger than we ever expected,” she said. “In its first week, the box office exceeded our projections. We were competing against titles like ‘Pillion’ and still performed much better than anticipated, considering our number of screens and marketing budget. Even compared to the double re-release of the ‘Top Gun’ films in Mexico, the response was remarkable. To us, it proves that audiences genuinely want to experience this kind of film on the big screen,” said Camacho.

More than eight weeks later, “Donnie Darko” remains in circulation through independent venues and has repeatedly entered Mexico’s box office top 10 despite a relatively limited release and a marketing campaign far smaller than those of most domestic and international titles sharing the marketplace.

To date, the film has grossed MXN $2.3 million at the Mexican box office (around $132,000 USD, sizable for a rep release) and expanded to 69 screens nationwide, including 43 Cinépolis locations and 26 independent venues. What began as an initiative supported by a small independent distributor ultimately expanded across Latin America, reaching an additional 36 Cinépolis screens in Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica.

During the film’s run, it competed in the box office against some of the biggest studio releases of the year including “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” “The Drama,” “Hoppers,” “Michael,” “Project Hail Mary,” “Hokum,” “The Sheep Detectives,” “Obsession,” “Mortal Kombat 2,” “Pillion,” “The Blue Trail,” “Los Domingos,” “Father Mother Sister Brother,” “Undertone,” the re-releases of “Top Gun” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” as well as Mexican productions such as “El Diablo Fuma,” “Juana,” “El Ritual del Nahual,” “Deseo,” and “No Dejes a los Niños Solos.”

As the project gradually took shape in late 2025, the idea of inviting Richard Kelly to accompany the release first emerged. It remained a distant possibility until San Juan managed to obtain the filmmaker’s email address through industry contacts.

Kelly ultimately traveled to Mexico on April 6 to present a special screening at Cinépolis Oasis Coyoacán and participate in a masterclass moderated by Mexican filmmaker Isaac Ezban.

Asked about the film’s unexpected success in the country and his experience in Mexico City, Kelly reflected on the enthusiasm the release has generated: “I am enormously grateful that audiences all across Mexico and Latin America have mobilized back to theaters to experience ‘Donnie Darko.’ Young people, especially those who weren’t even alive when we released the film in 2001, are embracing the theatrical experience, which should give us all hope for the future of our industry. There is a larger universe that exists beyond the confines of the film itself… and I believe that audiences want to experience the film again and again as a way to search for answers and perhaps speculate on what this all means moving forward. What secrets are hidden in plain view? What secrets are hidden in code?”

For Kelly, the Mexican release is also another chapter in the unlikely afterlife of a film that has continued to attract new audiences long after its troubled theatrical debut.

“Avena Cine was a wonderful partner for us in Mexico and Latin America, and we were able to mobilize and put together a successful release strategy in just a few weeks’ time, with great support from Cinepolis and Film Tank,” he told IndieWire. “Audiences are eager to experience this film on the big screen, where it truly belongs. I have always seen ‘Donnie Darko’ through the lens of my experience growing up in the American suburbs, but this film continues to defy expectations and expand across the world, proving that it has a global appeal that now spans many generations.”

When “Donnie Darko” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2001, Richard Kelly was only four years away from graduating from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. The screening generated immediate excitement, but the film soon encountered difficulties securing distribution. Scenes involving firearms alarmed distributors still grappling with the aftermath of the Columbine massacre, while the film’s October release via Newmarket was further complicated by a trailer prominently featuring an airplane crash just weeks after the September 11 attacks.

Looking back on the film’s long journey — from its troubled release in 2001 to its unexpected resurgence in Mexico 25 years later — Kelly sees the current success as part of a much larger story about the film’s legacy.

“’Donnie Darko’ had a very difficult launch, beginning at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001 and then with a very compromised theatrical release in North America on October 26, 2001. We barely made it into theaters at all. The original distributor, Newmarket Films, actually wanted to cancel the release altogether. I have never had one of those great weekend phone calls from an agent about robust box office numbers and a high per-screen average,” he said.

“But my films generate enormous ancillary revenue, which is gratifying, but also extremely frustrating because those numbers are not publicly reported. I hope people can see that this kind of longevity really matters when it comes to connecting with a worldwide audience, and I just hope this bodes well for all of the films I intend to make. Mexico is the fourth-largest market in the world for movie theater attendance. I have been working nonstop on so many ambitious stories, and I just need that first greenlight… and then the floodgates will be open,” he said.

Following the success of “Donnie Darko,” Camacho through Avena Cine is already preparing their next repertory release with Sarah Jacobson’s 1997 Sundance indie “Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore,” which is expected to reach Mexican theaters later this year.

As “Donnie Darko” approaches its 25th anniversary this October, its unexpected theatrical success in Mexico has already set a new course for Avena Cine, proving that repertory cinema can still find an audience when given the opportunity. For Camacho, the experience is now the inspiration for future releases. For Kelly, it’s yet another reminder that the life of a film rarely ends with its original release.