What happened to the director of Donnie Darko? We caught up with him independent.co.uk

In one of those overflowing racks of DVDs that your dad has since forced you to remove from his house, you could always find a slightly scratched copy of Donnie Darko. 

The film struggled at the box office (partly due to it releasing shortly after 9/11 and its plot involving a jet engine crash) but found a huge audience through word of mouth and MySpace, where myriad profiles listed it as their top film and were plastered with stills of Jake Gyllenhaal staring deep into your soul and finding nothing. It scooped a handful of awards and endured as a sort of cult film trinket, and, much like Damien Chazelle post-Whiplash, everyone was excited for what this bold new writer-director would do next.