David Fincher hits out at Chinese re-edit of Fight Club: ‘If you don’t like the story, why license the movie?’

‘The f**ing movie is 20 years old. It’s not like it had a reputation for being super cuddly,’ said the director of the cult 1999 film

David Fincher has condemned the recent Chinese re-edit of his 1999 film Fight Club which radically changed the ending.

The new version saw the original finale replaced with a black screen and captions announcing that police had “figured out” Tyler Durden’s plan and “arrested all criminals”.

It was released on the streaming service Tencent and other Chinese streaming sites earlier this month, but was taken down and replaced with the original version following an online backlash.

Speaking about the controversy with Empire magazine, the director said: “Here’s what we know. A company licensed the film from New Regency to show it in China, with a boilerplate [contract]: ‘You have to understand cuts may be made for censorship purposes.’

“No-one said, ‘If we don’t like the ending, can we change it?’ So there’s now a discussion being had as to what ‘trims’ means.”

Fincher continued: “If you don’t like this story, why would you license this movie? It makes no sense to me when people go, ‘I think it would be good for our service if we had your title on it… we just want it to be a different movie.’

“The f**ing movie is 20 years old. It’s not like it had a reputation for being super cuddly.”