Fight Club

This article is about the film. For the novel on which the film is based, see Fight Club (novel). For other uses, see Fight Club (disambiguation).

Fight Club
A pink bar of soap with "FIGHT CLUB" embossed is in the upper right. Below are headshots of Brad Pitt smiling in a red jacket and Edward Norton in a white shirt and tie, facing forward. Their names are below the portraits, with "HELENA BONHAM CARTER" in smaller print. Above is "MISCHIEF. MAYHEM. SOAP."
Theatrical release poster
Directed byDavid Fincher
Screenplay byJim Uhls
Based onFight Club
by Chuck Palahniuk
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyJeff Cronenweth
Edited byJames Haygood
Music byThe Dust Brothers
Production
companies
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release dates
  • September 10, 1999 (1999-09-10) (Venice)
  • October 15, 1999 (1999-10-15) (United States)
Running time
139 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States[nb 1]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$63–65 million[1][4]
Box office$101 million[1]

Fight Club is a 1999 American film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. It is based on a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Norton plays the unnamed narrator, who is discontented with his white-collar job. He forms a "fight club" with soap salesman Tyler Durden (Pitt) and becomes embroiled in a relationship with an impoverished but beguilingly attractive woman, Marla Singer (Bonham Carter).

Palahniuk's novel was optioned by Fox 2000 Pictures producer Laura Ziskin, who hired Jim Uhls to write the film adaptation. Fincher was selected because of his enthusiasm for the story. He developed the script with Uhls and sought screenwriting advice from the cast and others in the film industry. It was filmed in and around Los Angeles from July to December 1998. He and the cast compared the film to Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Graduate (1967), with a theme of conflict between Generation X and the value system of advertising.[5][6]

Studio executives did not like the film and restructured Fincher's intended marketing campaign to try to reduce anticipated losses. Fight Club premiered at the 56th Venice International Film Festival on September 10, 1999, and was released in the United States on October 15, 1999, by 20th Century Fox. The film failed to meet the studio's expectations at the box office and received polarized reactions from critics. It was ranked as one of the most controversial and talked-about films of the 1990s. However, Fight Club later found commercial success with its home video release, establishing it as a cult classic and causing media to revisit the film. In 2009, on its tenth anniversary, The New York Times dubbed it the "defining cult movie of our time."[7]

  1. ^ a b c "Fight Club". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  2. ^ "Fight Club (1999)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
  3. ^ Fight Club at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
  4. ^ "Fight Club". The Numbers. Nash Information Services, LLC. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference CNN1999 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Laist was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Lim, Dennis (November 6, 2009). "Forget Rule No. 1: Still Talking About 'Fight Club'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 10, 2012. Retrieved July 24, 2019.


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