One of the Biggest Flops of 1999: Fight Club Cost $63 Million, Made $37 Million, and Got Booed at Its Premiere
Fight Club had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September 1999, and the night didn’t go the way anyone might have hoped. The screening drew boos and people walking out mid-movie. David Fincher’s film went on to bomb in U.S. theaters, grossing around $37 million against a $63 million budget.
That tense premiere is the scene Edward Norton recently revisited on Fly on the Wall, the podcast hosted by David Spade and Dana Carvey, while promoting his new film The Invite, the A24 movie directed by Olivia Wilde that also stars Seth Rogen and Penélope Cruz.
Before the screening, Norton recalled, Brad Pitt asked him how he thought it would go. Norton said he didn’t think it would go well. Pitt’s answer was simple: “Me neither. Let’s get stoned.”
So the two of them stood at the back and watched the crowd boo and walk out in the middle of the movie. Then, after the credits rolled, Pitt turned to him with tears in his eyes.
Norton remembered the night as “a very nervy, but very cool feeling.” It took years, but Fight Club became one of the most quoted, dissected, and rewatched movies of its era. Pitt saw it first.
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