Brad Pitt predicted his film would flop

It’s now considered a “defining cult movie of our time”, but Brad Pitt and Edward Norton knew that Fight Club was going to be a flop when it was released.

Norton reminisced about the 20-year-old film on the most recent episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and he recalled how Pitt predicted the movie was destined for failure as they attended the premiere.

“I remember him (Brad Pitt) giving me this funny look and he said, ‘How do you think this is going to go?’” Norton told Maron. “I said, ‘I think it’s going to go very badly.’ And he said, ‘I do too, let’s get high.’ He had a joint which he always did then.

“I remember we went to this thing at some film festival and people booed it. Some people walked out.”

But the film’s two stars weren’t bothered by the reaction.

“We sat in the back and we watched it and there was all this negative feeling in the room and he turned to me in the dark and said, ‘That’s the best movie I’m ever going to be in,’ and I said, ‘I think so too!’” Norton said. “We were hugging each other, kind of like weepy. We were really happy.”

Fight Club, which is available to stream on Foxtel Now, only made $US37 million at the domestic box office against a $US65 million budget and received mixed reviews with many critics panning the film for its violent scenes.

The lack of initial interest didn’t last with Fight Club going on to smash DVD sales records and eventually going on to be labelled a cult classic.

So why didn’t it work in cinemas?

“We had a number of commentators, not film critics … who were openly antagonistic, despairing, trying to shoot down the movie before it opened,” Bill Mechanic, who was at the helm of Fox at the time, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Fight Club’s ticket sales were also dealt a blow by Rosie O’Donnell who gave away the film’s plot twist on national television during the week of its release.

The popular actor turned NBC talk show host was lucky enough to see an early screening of the psychological thriller, based on the 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk, but became offended by the graphic and violent themes featured throughout it.

She was so angered by the scenes that she panned the film to her national audience in the US, which reached more than five million viewers, and revealed the plot twist to deter people from going to see it.

In the time of no social media, O’Donnell’s major breach is considered to be one of the first documented spoilers, which A-lister Pitt, who played Tyler Durden, described at the time as “unforgivable”.

Speaking on the Fight Club DVD commentary, Pitt said: “I guess that is OK she (Rosie O’Donnell) hated it. She was saying this movie disturbed me, she could not sleep for nights.

“It hit a nerve. It struck some nerve whether she wanted to look at it or not. But the deal was, she gave away the ending on national television. That’s just unforgivable.”