Studio:
20th Century Fox.
Production Company:
Fox 2000 Pictures.
Project Phase: Greenlighted.
Who's In It:
Brad Pitt; Edward Norton; Helena Bonham Carter (Marla Singer); Meat Loaf (Robert Paulson ('Big Bob')?);
Eion Bailey; Jared Leto.
Who's Making It: David Fincher (Director); Jim Uhls (Screenwriter); Art Linson, Cean Chaffin,
Ross Grayson Bell (Producers); John S. Dorsey (Associate Producer); Jeff Cronenweth (Director of
Photography); Jim Haygood (Editor); Alex McDowell (Production Designer); The Dust
Brothers (Musical Score); based on the novel by
Chuck Palahniuk.
Premise: You're rich, you're upwardly mobile, you're young, you're male. What to do for fun? Why, beat the crap out of each other -- of course!
Release Date: June 23, 1999.
Comments: None.
Rumors: Unknown.
Scoop Feedback:
[Page draft submitted by 'Widgett'.]
March 22, 1998... Production is expected to start in June. [Scoop provided by 'Widgett'.] Diane reports to us that this "is a tale set in the near future where groups of civilized men form 'fight clubs' in order to get out their primal aggression. There's also a bizzarro love triangle between the leads." [Scooped by Diane.]
March 24, 1998... This scooper tells us that unless we've heard it from "a super-reliable source", Fox 2000 may not be producing this film. "I've read that David Fincher has signed a three picture deal (or something around there) with Propaganda Films, who also produced The Game. I don't know if he has to do all three in a row, but I would still question the info on Fox 2000." We recall reading something about Fincher's deal and thought it was with PolyGram. We're hoping some Fox 2000 or PolyGram people can fill in the grey, fuzzy gaps. [Thanks to the concern, 'TrapeZe'.]
April 11, 1998... Some cool commentary from scooper M.J. Packer about the chances The Fight Club will be next for Fincher. Seems they know a bit about how the system seems to operate...
"Interesting item about David Fincher's production-deals with Fox 2000 and Propaganda. I have gleaned from Screen International that he is considering James Ellroy's first original screenplay, The Night Watchman, and also an adaptation of Ellroy's The Black Dahlia. BOTH are slated as his next potential film and NEITHER of them are linked to EITHER of the above two studios. To be honest, I will be AMAZED if Fight Club is made. Having read Palahniuk's novel, I can categorically say that Hollywood is just NOT geared to this sort of subject-matter and I, for one, would rather it remained as a great book than a screwed-up, watered-down film. Aside from the Ellroy pictures, any CA-addict already knows that Fincher is attached to Rendezvous With Rama, the kind of film that would transform his career, and I'd bet that these three projects will make more demands on his time. Sad but true: a Fox-made film about the anarchistic breakdown of civilization as we know it, masculine tribalism and soap made from stolen liposuction fat would have put a smile on my face that you couldn't wipe off with a crowbar, but I can't see it happening anytime soon. My prediction: Fight Club goes the way of Jacob's Ladder and Total Recall as the one decent idea floating through the Hollywood pipeline for a decade-and-a-half, until someone with a brain cell summons up the sinew to greenlight it."
[Fighting words issued by M.J. Packer.]
'JAH' tells us that Cion Chaffin is also a producer on this project. She's also Fincher's real-life girlfiend too. [Courtesy of 'JAH'.]
April 19, 1998... This week's Entertainment Weekly contains a short blurb about the project. It confirms that filming will get underway shortly and that Courtney Love and Helena Bonham Carter are both being considered for the female lead. [Scooped by Diane.]
May 17, 1998... Helena Bonham Carter landed the female lead role at the end of April. While some scoopers expressed their shock in Carter getting the 'bad girl' role over Courtney Love, some readers expressed their delight. "Brilliantly subversive casting, in my view," was how our reader Matt summed up the decision. "This means that she has landed the part of Marla Singer, one point on the Fight Club love-triangle. Very subversive choice. I could have seen Courtney Love as Marla because she practically IS Marla, but to bring a cornerstone of Merchant-Ivory films into this one is a masterstroke. Nobody would have seen HBC like this before, guaranteed."
The film was scheduled to commence photgraphy in L.A. on the 12th of May, and last week Meat Loaf joined the cast list. [Suckerpunched by 'flatbroke', Diane, ZENtertainment, Matt and anonymous.]
We also received a summary from someone who's read the book and told us how the book's characters would be adapted to fit the leads. If you want to read the scooper's summary of the book, you're being warned. A EXTREME SPOILER WARNING is issued; swipe at your own peril.
"The problem with The Fight Club is that it will have a similar structure to a dozen of lousy recent sci-fi movies like Dark City or 12 Monkeys
and even David Fincher's other film
[Anonymous.]
Another different scooper sent us their thoughts upon re-reading the book that started this whole page...
"Out of curiosity, I dug up the Chuck Palahniuk novel myself and gave it a read to see what Fincher & Co. are up to this time. First off, this is not a very good novel -- it suffers from the same schizophrenia as the major character. The whole 'fight club' thing doesn't really sync up with the rest of the story -- I get the feeling C.P. started with that one element and then built his story around it, as a way of trying to get it to go somewhere, but the two halves (the triangle and the fight clubs) never sync up. If they do this, I'm hoping they frankly discard all the split-personality nonsense, because it does nothing for the story at all. To be honest, the fight clubs themselves aren't very interesting, either -- at least not the way they're treated here..." [Sent to us by 'The Gline'.]
And a follow-up to yesterday's summary of the book from someone who's read the movie script. SPOILER WARNING, swipe at your own risk:
"In answer to the last scooper's query -- they DO leave the book's ending in the movie. I read the script and it was a complete letdown. Why would all that talent get behind what is, really, a pointless, aimless, episodic script that has one good idea and doesn't know what to do with it."
[Anonymous.]
May 28, 1998... A rebuttal to 'The Gline's posting from last week. Spoilers abound, since it dives into details from the novel:
"I don't want to monopolise this page or make tedious for CA readers my interest for Fight Club, but I felt I had to respond to the last couple of scoops - especially that from The Gline stating that it is not a very good novel. He's damn right. It's an absolutely brilliant novel. As for the rest of the scoop, I just don't know what this individual is talking about. The 'love-triangle' (I'm starting to get sick of that term) and the fight clubs are inextricably linked, and this is the deal: Ed Norton's death-obsessed pen-pusher is an insomniac who attends cancer support groups under false pretences to find social affinity and, consequently, a bit of shut-eye. Self-abuse freak Marla, another faking group-crasher, nudges Our Man out of the loop when their mutual dislike threatens him with exposure. But. The part of Our Man that Ain't Quite Right falls for Marla and rises to the surface under the name of Tyler Durden (step right up, Mr. Pitt). A line in the book even says, 'Tyler had been around a long time before we met.' Tyler requests Our Man to hit him as hard as he can after 'they' get shitfaced in a bar, and fight club is born. This is not, in and of itself, interesting, but it forms a framework in which faceless, voiceless Office Joes raised only by their divorced mothers can regain their masculinity. It spreads like a rash. Then comes the best part: Tyler raises the transgressive stakes and creates Project Mayhem, an army of saboteurs recruited from fight club, all set for an anarchistic overthrow of organized civilisation. Then - oops - Our Man gets friendly with Marla. Tyler takes a powder. Our Man goes a-looking. Wherever he goes, people with messed-up, bruised features tell him that they have no idea who Tyler Durden is, then wink and call him Sir. In an apartment, Tyler appears to Our Man and spills the beans - Tyler has been using Our Man's insomniac body to move around at night and orchestrate Project Mayhem. He threatens Our Man with harmful intentions towards Marla, to be carried out if Our Man tries to tie himself to his bed or take an overdose. The walls come crashing down - Tyler and Our Man end up chewing on a gun in the top floor of the Parker-Morris building, which is infested with rioting Project Mayhem 'Space Monkeys' (foot-soldiers) and wired to explode. Eventually, Our Man is hospitalised. The building never blew up. Tyler and - by extension - fight club and Project Mayhem were all hallucinations...an elaborate revenge-fantasy on a burned-out world thought up by a desperately sad man. But the bruised hospital attendants who bring him his pills and food whisper that everything is going according to plan.
"It's, y'know, a METAPHOR - something that books pull off better than films - describing a CONDITION. As with Crash, the test of The Fight Club will be whether it can cope with transferring a novel's metaphorical concept to the literal form of film. But it is certainly not 'pointless', and the schizo outcome is an essential part of the central ideas. Hopefully, what we're looking at here is the David Fincher Art Film, not the Seven's Box-Office Gross Eat Your Heart Out film. We need the former a hell of a lot more than we need the latter - Fincher's potential is wasted on mere numbers."
[Broguht back from the brink by M.J. Packer.]
July 1, 1998... Sources say that the book's gone through an incredible process to become a movie. Word is that one of the film's producers, Ross Grayson Bell, first read the Palahniuk novel back in January 1996; that makes it a scant 18 months from then until filming began on June 8th. Definitely uncommon in Tinseltown. We've also heard that Fincher was handed the novel while considering directing The Sky is Falling and his enjoyment of Palahniuk's novel was the key motivating factor for Fox to option the material. Presently, the movie continues to shoot in L.A. [Anonymous.]
July 21, 1998... "I'm in contact with a friend of Chuck Palahniuk's who just recently visted The Fight Club on location (LA) with said author. He saw a scene that takes place at a drycleaners (with Brad Pitt) where they shot 42 takes. They visited a $900K Victorian house that was built in a industrial area and then subsequently trashed for the movie. He also was a guest in Fincher's trailer who showed them dailies of a few sceens that take place at the cancer support groups (Pitt and Bonham-Carter were in these). Fincher commented to them about what kind of music he was thinking about for the movie... 'something that is there, but doesn't lead the story.' He also had the chance to talk to Ed Norton a said he was very nice and down to earth." [Anonymous.]
September 1, 1998... Techno-industrial band The Dust Brothers are working on the score for this film. ['C'.]
December 3, 1998... The picture was supposed to have wrapped already, but we've been scooped that the ending had to be rewritten at the last minute. Reshoots are being held this week and it may last into next week as well. The pic's release date is looking more and more likely to be sometime toward the end of July 1999. [Scooped by our pal 'Estella'.]
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