CHUCK PALAHNIUK: What’s Next After FIGHT CLUB 2

The writer talks about a near future with Tyler Durden back on the sidelines …

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Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club 2 is out in trade and will be released as a special Library Edition from Dark Horse this fall. We spoke to him and artist David Mack, who illustrated the covers for FC2, about it here.

And while Fight Club 3 could be coming in 2018, Palahniuk (and Mack) spoke with G.D. Kennedy about what else is in store …

G.D. Kennedy: Other than FC2, you have a number of other projects coming up.  One of the more interesting ones is Bait, which is a collection of short stories married with an adult coloring book (due in October). Can you tell us a bit about what the stories in Bait are about?

Chuck: Almost all of the Bait stories are dark tales about parents and children, or at least people who seek to nurture weaker people. This allows for power to shift back and forth several times before the story is resolved. And depicting children or child-like characters, like pets, in a children’s idiom seemed appropriate.

G.D.: Why did you decide to tackle a coloring book?

Chuck: I loved the work of so many artists who’d done the variant covers for FC2, I didn’t want to lose touch with them. So nine artists, including David Mack, are creating the illustrations, each in her or his own unique style.

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G.D.: Bait is being published by Dark Horse Comics. Does this suggest that there are more comics in your future?

Chuck: More comics, yes. More novels, maybe. More teaching, definitely. I’d like to live a larger life than novelist-with-typewriter.

G.D.: As Chuck mentioned, David has a piece in Bait. David, can you tell us a bit about the piece? What’s it like contributing to a coloring book?   

David: I tried to make it very friendly for coloring. I did a drawing of Chuck for it. First I captured the likeness. But then I kind of abstracted the likeness to add a lot of lines in a kind of stained-glass effect to provide the readers with a lot of “coloring opportunities” to contrast the facets and give readers the opportunity to color it in a realistic way or a very abstracted way.

G.D.: After Bait, do you have any plans for future collaboration?

David: Well I think I may. And I still have that fantasy of doing those “Lunches with Chuck” ideas that I had written after our talks. It would be fun to portray them in a conversational way, and then let the visuals get more elaborate to reflect the subject matter of the discussion.

The media and imagery would evolve and bring to life the discussions, and I think the content of the discussions themselves would be heady and interesting enough to drive that and keep it very engaging for readers. It would be the kind of thing that I’d like to read myself. So I hope others may enjoy it too.

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G.D.: Chuck, you also recently rain a Kickstarter campaign to try and turn your novel “Lullaby” into a film. How was the Kickstarter experience?

Chuck:  It was a scary crapshoot. Really, it was the brainchild of Andy Mingo, who’ll be directing the film. Andy made a wonderful short film from my story, Romance, and he created the three book trailers to support FC2. As he tells it, people from Kickstarter and the Sundance Film Festival gave him enormous support and encouragement, and he received almost double the original requested sum of money.

G.D.: How is the film project itself coming along?

Chuck: Andy plans to begin shooting in October, but I suspect he and I will rehash the script several times before then.

G.D.: You also have some little-screen news, too, with Survivor being made into a television show. How is that coming along?

Chuck: All I can tell you about Survivor is that the original screenwriter for Fight Club, Jim Uhls, is writing the pilot and first season. My fingers are crossed. My novel “Snuff” is also being developed for television. As for me, I’m sitting in a Boston hotel room, having finished my last book-signing on tour. I’ll be happy just to kiss my dog in eight hours.

Photo by Alan Amato

Photo by Alan Amato

Palahniuk and Mack talk Fight Club 2, here.

 

Author: Dan Greenfield

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  1. Good news! Chuck Palahnuik is working on Fight Club 2 as a graphic novel - Firstpost - […] news is, now there's Fight Club 2 in the pipeline, and that too in a graphic novel […]

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