Frank the rabbit is coming back to cinema screens, at least in America.

Fathom Entertainment has put out a new trailer marking 25 years of Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly's 2001 sci-fi cult object, and the film is heading back into US theatres for a three-day run on October 2, 3 and 4, in a fresh 4K restoration. FirstShowing.net, which carried the trailer first, called it one of the defining cult classics to come out of American indie cinema, and it is hard to argue.

For anyone who somehow missed it the first time: a jet engine falls out of the sky and crashes into a teenager's bedroom, missing him by seconds because he happened to be sleepwalking. That teenager is Donnie Darko, played by a 20-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal in the role that arguably set his whole career in motion. What follows is twenty-eight days, six hours, forty-two minutes and twelve seconds of visions, time-travel physics, a man in a rabbit suit named Frank, and a body count nobody quite agrees on the meaning of, even now.

The supporting cast reads like a time capsule of American cinema circa 2001: Jena Malone as Gretchen, Drew Barrymore, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mary McDonnell, Katharine Ross, and Patrick Swayze in one of his last major roles before Noah Wyle and, in his film debut, Seth Rogen. Kelly wrote and directed the film as his first feature, before going on to make the far weirder, far more divisive Southland Tales and The Box.

A book to go with the movie

The anniversary edition apparently isn't just a clean-up job in 4K. Fathom's release will include an exclusive new introduction from Kelly himself, reflecting on the film's afterlife, according to FirstShowing.net. And Kelly has also finished a new book, titled The Philosophy of Time Travel: The Epic Sequel to Donnie Darko, which is set to release around the same time as the theatrical run this fall. For a film whose entire mythology hinges on a fictional book-within-the-book by that same name, that is either a very neat trick or a very long-delayed promise, depending on how charitable you feel.

Worth remembering that Donnie Darko wasn't a hit when it first opened. It premiered at Sundance in 2001 and made just $3.1 million at the US box office on its original theatrical run, before word of mouth and the DVD shelf turned it into the film college kids quoted at each other for the next two decades.

There's no confirmation yet on whether this 4K re-release travels beyond the US. Fathom Events runs are typically America-only affairs, so Indian fans hoping to catch Frank on the big screen may have to wait for a streaming rerun or import ticket plans. For now, October 2 to 4 is the window, and it's American theatres only.