Richard Kelly has been making his sophomore directorial outing Southland Tales for a long time now. Even though a lot of people have already seen it (and hated it), the film still isn’t done. In fact, Kelly posted a notice on his MySpace page today in which he announced that they’ve only now gotten the greenlight from Sony to do the final round of visual effects they need to wrap the project up.

Kelly says, “We will now be able to finish the film properly. Phew! The film will be completely finished for the first public screening sometime mid-summer.” That’s good news for Donnie Darko fans, most of whom had high hopes for Kelly after his directorial debut. At least those who didn’t see his director’s cut of the movie in which he cut the heart right out of it and ruined it. I did see it, and despite my unmatched love for Donnie Darko I’ve since been kind of nervous about what might happen when Richard Kelly does something else.

I guess I’m not the only one since it sounds like Sony was hesitant to give him the money to finish his film. We’ll know more once he finally releases a trailer. For now, all we know about Southland Tales is that it’s set in a near future (one which gets nearer every day it takes him to finish this thing) where the world stands on the brink of social, economic, and environmental disaster.