Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sarah Michelle Gellar told SCI FI Wire that her next film looks likely to be Southland Tales, which was written and will be directed by Donnie Darko auteur Richard Kelly. "I had seen Donnie Darko, and I thought Richard Kelly was pretty much a genius," Gellar said in an interview while promoting her upcoming horror film, The Grudge. "We met and he told me this idea he had for his follow-up film."

Gellar added that she took the role based on the original ideas in the script. "I pretty much would have said yes blindly, but it was just such a great character, and he just had so many great ideas that it was something I was definitely interested in doing. It’s impossible to explain, really. If someone hadn’t seen Donnie Darko, or didn’t know anything about it, could you imagine trying to describe it? ’OK, it’s about a boy and this imaginary bunny?’ Richard Kelly’s movies are so abstract that they’re somewhat difficult to pigeonhole. But Southland Tales is basically [set] over a Fourth of July weekend during an election year, and it’s about the chaos in the future [in 2008], and what happens to Hollywood. It’s sort of a biting comment on our tabloid society. Does that work?"

Gellar said that the film doesn’t have the same kind of SF and fantasy elements as Donnie Darko, but it’s still a work in progress. "Not as much as Donnie Darko. There are no imaginary talking bunnies, at least not yet. There may be talking bunnies by the time we film it." Southland Tales will be released in 2005.