20 Things You Didn't Know About Fight Club

Although Fincher was involved in the development of the film from the beginning, he nearly didn’t get the job at all: in fact, he was the producer’s fifth choice.

Peter Jackson, fresh from the well-received Heavenly Creatures (which had changed many perceptions of him as a director), was the preferred choice. However, by that point he was a year into developing The Lord Of The Rings movies, having won the rights in 1997. Universal tied him down to do King Kong while he was finishing The Return Of The King, so he wouldn’t have had any availability until 2006.

Bryan Singer was free but hadn’t bothered reading the book when he met with Fox for the job. Flirting With Disaster’s David O’ Russell had read the book but didn’t understand it - he went on to direct Three Kings instead. That left Trainspotting director Danny Boyle, who would have been an interesting choice - but he elected to develop and direct Alex Garland’s The Beach.

Fincher, on the other hand, had bad form with Fox, having clashed with them so much during the filming of the disastrous Alien 3. But he wanted the job badly. He’d read the galleys of the unpublished work while developing The Game, identifying with the characters and themes and from all reports, laughing his head off.

He initially tried to buy the rights himself, only to find that Fox had beaten him to it. He swallowed his pride, made a pitch: and Laura Ziskin hired him.