David Fincher Hasn’t Seen Fight Club in Twenty Years and Doesn’t Want To

David Fincher is known for many films, including Se7en, Zodiac, The Social Network, and Gone Girl. One of the director’s most famous films is Fight Club, an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel of the same name. The Oscar-nominated film has quite a following, but you won’t catch Fincher revisiting it. The director recently spoke with GQ in honor of his newest film, The Killer, and explained why he has no plans to watch Fight Club again.

“I haven’t seen it in 20 years,” Fincher said of Fight Club. “And I don’t want to.” When asked if he has an aversion to watching his old films, Fincher replied, “No- yes. It’s like looking at your grade school pictures, or something. ‘Yeah, I was there.’”

Recently, Palahniuk explained to Variety that there was one thing about the Fight Club movie that he didn’t like, and that was the “ticking bomb” countdown in the final confrontation between The Narrator (Ed Norton) and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt).

“I wasn’t a big fan of the ticking bomb, that counting down near the end,” Palahniuk revealed. “And [screenwriter] Jim Uhls stuck it in there because there’s obviously such a trope, and I’ve grown to accept that this is a trope.”

What Is The Killer About?

You can read a description of The Killer here: “After a fateful near-miss, an assassin battles his employers and himself on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.” The Killer “tells the story of an assassin that begins to develop a conscience and doubts his work, which happens at a time when clients demand his particular set of skills.” 

The Killer stars Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton, leading a cast that includes Kerry O’Malley as Dolores, Charles Parnell (Top Gun: Maverick) as Hodges, Arliss Howard (Full Metal Jacket), and Brazilian star Sophie Charlotte. Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (Mindhunter) is re-teaming with Fincher for the film, while his musical collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, Mank) will compose the score. Fincher’s Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker penned the script, which is based on the French graphic novel by Alexis Nolent.

“This is the type of film I was salivating to do,” Fassbender previously shared with Empire. “There’s suspense and intrigue. A slow drip. I love that kind of movie.” He added, “There’s just trying to understand the mind of a sociopath … I try and put together a lifespan, to where the character is now.”

“Michael’s eyes betray a lot … He can hold a lot of conflicting things in his mind and his eyes allow you access to it,” Fincher added. “He’s like Daniel Craig [who starred in Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo] in that way, saying, ‘I can do it better.’ Tell him to stop 1/3 inch shorter and he can fine-tune that technical stuff, while on top of that, he’s got really good ideas about behavior.” 

The director continued, “He has this gift as an actor, but clamped on top of it is this incredible discipline about how he subdivides his next move.”

The Killer will arrive on Netflix on November 10.