This year Fight Club celebrates its 25th anniversary. It’s one of the most influential films in pop culture. From David Fincher’s stylish production to the iconic ending when the scratching guitar sounds of the Pixies ring out: Fight Club has become an integral part of many best lists.
With an average rating of 8.5 out of 10 points Fight Club is also one of the best films of all time on Moviepilot. Fincher’s brilliant adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel will not soon be forgotten. One key person behind the scenes wasn’t so lucky: screenwriter Jim Uhls.
What happened to Fight Club screenwriter Jim Uhls?
Fight Club’s genius isn’t just due to Palahniuk’s source material and Fincher’s direction. In the adaptation process of a book, the person who writes the script plays one of the characters most important roles at all. This is about preparing the essence of several hundred pages for film form.
Cinema World/20th Century Studios
Fight Club
Which moments are retained? Which ones have been deleted? And which ones can perhaps be cleverly merged with other scenes? When adapting a book countless decisions that are often not even visible or understandable to outsiders. Screenwriting is an art in itself.
It’s all the more astonishing that Uhls didn’t have much of a career in Hollywood after his razor-sharp Fight Club script. On the contrary: Just another blockbuster is in his filmography: Jumper. What was supposed to be the start of a new sci-fi action series in the 2000s turned out to be a huge disappointment.
After the masterpiece Fight Club, only the sci-fi disappointment Jumper came: Jim Uhls explains why
Although Jumper did significantly better at the box office than Fight Club, it was torn apart by criticism. With a 15 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Jumper is considered “rotten” and on Metacritic it doesn’t fare any better with an average score of 35 out of 100. For Uhls, Jumper marks the end of his career as a screenwriter.
20th Century Studios
jumper
But was that really all? To mark Fight Club’s 20th anniversary, the screenwriter spoke about his career and explained why in an interview with Storious Magazine (via Reddit) five years ago his name is no longer in the credits from big Hollywood films appears:
[Nach Fight Club] I was approached by projects that had big stars, directors, and producers – the kind of names that would make a studio want to make the movie without even seeing a script. All of these projects were ‘out there somewhere’ and they were stories that were commercial enough so that a studio would give the green light. In each of these projects, those involved spoke highly of the scripts I wrote – from the first draft to the finishing touches.
Uhls continues:
But due to completely different setbacks that affected each of these projects, none came to fruition [der Drehbücher] filmed. Many experienced people in the industry have told me that this is not uncommon – in fact, much more likely than a script actually being made into a film. I was too lucky that Fight Club was the first film made from a script I wrote. The whole thing was just too good. This gave me an impossible expectation.
It sounds like Uhls simply hasn’t had much luck with his post-Fight Club projects. Even well-known Hollywood authors like David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man) can see shelves full of them scripts and ideas that were never implemented that have fallen apart due to circumstances beyond their control.
One of the best movies: Where can you watch Fight Club?
If you want to get another picture of Fight Club for yourself, you can currently do so in Streaming subscription to Disney+ and Netflix do. The film is also available with various purchase and rental options on Amazon Prime Video. In Germany it has also been released in various editions on DVD and Blu-ray.
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