David Fincher is breaking the first rule of “Fight Club” for its 25th anniversary: The auteur is revisiting the iconic 1999 thriller with a remastered re-release, accompanied by a tie-in book. New Regency and 20th Century Studios announced the remastered 4K Ultra HD, which was supervised by Fincher. The iconic film will also be theatrically re-released at a later date with plans forthcoming.
In conjunction with the remaster, Insight Editions and New Regency will release an exclusive 25th anniversary art book as a collector’s piece. The book includes new interviews, unearthed visuals, original artwork, and rare behind-the-scenes material, offering fans the deepest look yet into the making of the film and its enduring legacy.
“Fight Club” stars Edward Norton as the Narrator, who becomes infatuated with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and their shared love interest Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) as he finds himself tapping into his inner savagery thanks to an underground fight club.
The lore of the New Regency film extends far beyond just its jaw-dropping twist ending: “Fight Club” was apparently edited by Meat Loaf, panned by Paul Thomas Anderson, almost starred Courtney Love, and even led to Janeane Garofalo claiming Norton got her booted from the cast by telling director Fincher that she “didn’t have the chops” to take on the role of Marla (subsequently, according to Garofalo, lobbied for Love to be in the role … only for Pitt to then take issue with it since Love blocked his attempts at a Kurt Cobain biopic.)
And if all of that cinematic history didn’t feel like a gut punch already, “Fight Club” was re-edited in 2022 to get a censored ending for its streaming release in China via Tencent Video.
Fincher didn’t mince words when it came to responding to the altered ending, which actually more closely mirrors author Chuck Palahniuk‘s original conclusion for the novel. “If you don’t like this story, why would you license this movie? It makes no sense to me when people go, ‘I think it would be good for our service if we had your title on it…we just want it to be a different movie,’” Fincher told Empire magazine. “The fucking movie is 20 years old. It’s not like it had a reputation for being super cuddly.”
Upon its original 1999 release, “Fight Club” was initially a box office bomb. The film debuted at Venice and later grossed $37 million domestically on a $63 million budget.
“It was an interesting experience because we all loved it and we were very confident about it. We were a little stung,” lead star Norton said during PeopleTV’s “Couch Surfing” in 2019. “It wasn’t financially successful at first, it never was even in conversation about awards and all that crap. You can never completely detach your ego to how does it do when it first opens, but then we all had the very special experience of realizing that the relationship it formed with people was everything you dream of when you get into films.”
Fincher reflected on the film’s legacy for its 20th anniversary, saying at the time, “We were making a satire. We were saying, ‘This is as serious about blowing up buildings as ‘The Graduate’ is about fucking your mom’s friend.’”
