Fight Club

Fight Club opened October 15, 1999, David Fincher directing an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel: Edward Norton as an unnamed, insomniac office drone, Brad Pitt as the charismatic soap-maker Tyler Durden, and Helena Bonham Carter as Marla Singer. Made for around $63 million, it split critics violently — some hailed it as one of the year's most original films, others called it irresponsible and appalling — and it underperformed in North America, opening to about $11 million and finishing with roughly $37 million domestically against a worldwide gross of only $102 million. Twentieth Century Fox treated it as a costly misfire.

Then home video happened. Fight Club became one of the movies that proved the DVD era could resurrect a film left for dead — it sold more than six million discs within a decade and pulled in over $55 million in video and DVD rentals, passing hand to hand through dorm rooms and late-night arguments. The first two rules of Fight Club became one of the most quoted lines of the era, Tyler Durden ended up on a million posters, and by 2009 The New York Times was calling it "the defining cult movie of our time."

Its reputation has stayed complicated — endlessly quoted, endlessly misread, argued over by people who take Tyler Durden as a hero and people who insist the film is mocking exactly that impulse. That argument is a big part of why it never faded. Few 1999 flops have aged into something this permanently discussed.