Who's To Blame for Fight Club Box Office Flop? Norton Has a Theory

But back in 1999 it sparked a controversy, received polarized critical responses and failed to meet expectations at the box office, only finding commercial success later, with its home video release.

Edward Norton, who starred as the Narrator in Fight Club, has his own opinion about the reasons for the film's initial poor performance. He feels that those who promoted the movie felt insulted by the movie and therefore did not try their best.

As he said during his appearance on PeopleTV's Couch Surfing:

"I think there was a reluctance on the part of some of the people who were actually marketing it, to embrace the idea that it was funny, and honestly I think they felt indicted by it."

Well, the assumption that certain people at the studio felt that the film was calling them out might be justified.

"I think if you felt more like the guy who plays my boss in the film, then you tended to not like the film," Norton added.

Norton even admitted that the troubles that Fight Club had on its debut – both in terms of lackluster financial returns, and in terms of critical response, with the film not getting any awards – were felt by the cast and the crew.

"It was an interesting experience because we all loved it and we were very confident about it. We were a little stung."

As he explained the obvious: "You can never completely detach your ego to how does it do when it first opens."

But of course, eventually Norton, together with Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter and the director David Fincher were vindicated, as not only Fight Club earned a solid revenue from DVD sales, it became one of most talked-about films of 1990s, if not the most talked-about film.

Not only those people at the studio who felt "indicted by" were indicted again by its eventual commercial success, the film critics also were put to shame thanks to their disregard of a film which ended up so culturally important.