In 1999, the same year 20th Century Fox brought a film adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel Fight Club to the screen, a new Palahniuk novel – called Survivor – reached book store shelves. So Fox picked up the film rights to that one, too. They just never made the movie. As Palahniuk explained to Digital Spy, “David Fincher (director of Fight Club) was really pushing [Fox] in their development and they’d gotten Jake Paltrow – Gwyneth’s brother – to write a screenplay and people were very happy with that. They’d started to cast it but then 9/11 happened and that seemed to harpoon all kinds of transgressive comedies.” In 2008, the rights were acquired by I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence, who wrote the screenplay and said it would be his next project after I Am Legend… but it wasn’t. He never got his Survivor adaptation into production and the rights slipped out of his hands. Now, Deadline reports of a third attempt to get a Survivor adaptation going, this time by writer/director Daniel Brown.
Brown made his feature directorial debut with Your Lucky Day, an action thriller starring the late Angus Cloud, which received a theatrical release in November 2023.
What is Survivor about?
With this film, Brown will be bringing the following story to the screen: Tender Branson ― last surviving member of the so-called “Creedish Death Cult” ― is dictating his incredible life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the plane, which will shortly reach terminal velocity and crash into the vast Australian outback. Before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid- and collagen-packed media messiah, author of a best-selling autobiography, Saved from Salvation, and the even better selling Book of Very Common Prayer (The Prayer to Delay Orgasm, The Prayer to Prevent Hair Loss, The Prayer to Silence Car Alarms). He’ll even share his insight that “the only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage,” and deny responsibility for the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Landfill ― a 20,000-acre repository for the nation’s outdated pornography. Among other matters both bizarre and trenchant. Palahniuk’s novel is described as being “a satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world.”
Production
The film adaptation is being produced by Ryan Rettig and Miles David Romney for Community Garden and financier V42, along with Mel Turner and Axel Paton of Ground Control. Filming is expected to take place in Auckland, New Zealand sometime in early 2026.
Here’s hoping that Daniel Brown will have better luck with Survivor than Jake Paltrow and Francis Lawrence did. So far, the only Palahniuk novel other than Fight Club to get the film treatment is Choke. Directed by Clark Gregg, that film was released in 2008.
Have you read the Chuck Palahniuk novel Survivor, and are you interested in seeing a film adaptation? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
