CHOKE sells at Sundance

by Matt Holmes

Tuesday morning saw Fox Searchlight spend $5 million to secure the rights to the Clark Gregg directed CHOKE, which one reviewer on the web said it played to cheers at the Sundance Film Festival. The second adaptation from a Chuck Palahniuk novel (the first, need I remind you being FIGHT CLUB?) stars Sam Rockwell as a sex-addicted con-man who pays for his mother's (Angelica Huston) hospital bills by playing on the sympathies of those who save him from (intentionally) choking to death.

The good news from the reviews coming out of the festival have been the confirmation that Rockwell has a Ed-Norton like voice-over which perfectly conveys Palahniuk's voice from the novel though the humor this time is more on the light-hearted scale rather than full on cynical. In fact we have been warned that if we are Palahniuk fans, then we probably won't like this work but then again I remember the same kind of mumblings when FIGHT CLUB was released a decade ago... and look how that turned out! It wasn't a big surprise the movie sold based on the author's work, though it's unknown if Searchlight's deal will cover Europe and in particular the U.K. source - variety
Editor-in-chief
Editor-in-chief

Matt Holmes is the co-founder of What Culture, formerly known as Obsessed With Film. He has been blogging about pop culture and entertainment since 2006 and has written over 10,000 articles.