Fight Club was a terrific satire on modern society, a dark comedy which provoked much controversy on release. Author Chuck Palahniuk wrote the novel and admitted that he thought the film improved on his work. It starred Ed Norton and Brad Pitt and was directed by David Fincher and although it went on to become a huge cult success the studio considered it a commercial failure at the box office. There were several obstacles to the film being made and it might have been very different. The novel was first picked up by a 20th Century Fox book scout but a studio reader suggested it would not make a good film. It was passed along to producers Lawrence Bender and Art Linson but they agreed with the reader and passed. Producers Josh Donen and Ross Bell worked it up and the rights were acquired by Laura Ziskin for Fox 2000 for $10,000. The first problem was that Chuck Palahniuk did not want to write the screenplay and so they had to find a writer. Buck Henry, the man who adapted The Graduate was considered but Jim Uhls was very keen to get the job and his efforts to be hired paid off. With the project greenlit and the script in progress they needed a director but the search proved trickier than expected. The first man offered the job was Peter Jackson but he was already busy preparing for Lord of the Rings so he passed. He did say he loved the novel and would have done it if he was free. They decided to try Bryan Singer next but he didn’t even read the book he was sent before passing. Danny Boyle was the third choice and he read the book and then met with Donen and Bell but in the end he decided to do The Beach. Finally they turned to David Fincher who had made a name for himself with Se7en and was just completing The Game. The problem was although he was very keen to do the film and had actually tried to acquire the rights himself he was not so keen on working with 20th Century Fox again after a terrible experience on Alien 3. He met with Laura Ziskin and the studio head Bill Mechanic and was convinced to take the job. Now it was time to cast the main characters and first up was the charismatic Tyler Durden. Brad Pitt was so memorable in the role that it is a good thing producer Linson championed him for the role and got his way. The other producer Bell wanted to hire Russell Crowe for the part although he later admitted he was glad that Linson argued the point. The part of The Narrator was also crucial and the producers suggested Matt Damon and Sean Penn as candidates. Fincher held out for Edward Norton but he was in the running for several roles including Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. When the role went to Jim Carrey Norton was free to accept Fight Club and he signed on. The last major part to cast was Marla Singer and early on both Courtney Love and Winona Ryder were in the frame. Eventually the choice came down to Helena Bonham Carter and Reese Witherspoon. The studio wanted Witherspoon and Fincher wanted Bonham Carter. The argument was settled when Witherspoon refused the role because the film was too dark for her. Fincher had various run-ins with the studio over his plans for the production and he managed to get a few things over on them. For a start he managed to squeeze the initial $50 million budget up to over $60 million. In fact the original budget proposed by the studio was just $23 million. Despite the threat from regency Enterprises that they would pull funding altogether Fincher refused to cut the budget and after reviewing raw footage they agreed to put more money in. The line that Marla was due to say in bed was “I want to have your abortion” but Laura Ziskin objected. Fincher agreed to change the line provided the new one could not be cut, she agreed and he changed it to “I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school.” Apparently Ziskin preferred the original line but Fincher refused to change it back. He shot well over 1500 reels of film which was a lot more than usual and some of the CG used was incredibly time consuming and expensive to produce. The big explosive finale shot took 14 months and contained 4 million separately animated digital elements. The entire shoot took 138 days and Fincher applied various techniques to the film for editing. His final cut was greeted with confusion by the execs and they had no idea how to market the film, they even tried advertising it during WWE and UFC events. Despite the studio flapping the film still took over $100 million at the worldwide box office. It went on to be a massive seller on DVD and is now considered one of the best films of all time.