to provide a press junket, posters, billboards, and trailers for TV that highlighted the film's fight scenes. The studio advertised Fight Club on cable during World Wrestling Federation broadcasts, which Fincher protested, believing that the placement created the wrong context for the film. Linson believed that the "ill-conceived one-dimensional" marketing by marketing executive Robert Harper largely contributed to Fight Clubs lukewarm box office performance in the United States. Theatrical run The studio held Fight Clubs world premiere at the 56th Venice International Film Festival on September 10, 1999. For the American theatrical release, the studio hired the National Research Group to test screen the film; the group predicted the film would gross between and in its opening weekend. Fight Club opened commercially in the United States and Canada on October 15, 1999 and earned in 1,963 theaters over the opening weekend. The film ranked first at the weekend box office, beating Double Jeopardy and The Story of Us, a fellow weekend opener. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale. The gender mix of audiences for Fight Club, argued to be "the ultimate anti-date flick", was 61% male and 39% female; 58% of audiences were below the age of 21. Despite the film's top placement, its opening gross fell short of the studio's expectations. Over the second weekend, Fight Club dropped 42.6% in revenue, earning . In its original theatrical run, the film grossed in the United States and Canada, and in other territories, for a worldwide total of . (With subsequent re-releases, the film's worldwide gross increased to .) The underwhelming North American performance of Fight Club soured the relationship between 20th Century Fox's studio head Bill Mechanic and media executive Rupert Murdoch, which contributed to Mechanic's resignation in June 2000. The British Board of Film Classification reviewed Fight Club for its November 12, 1999 release in the United Kingdom and removed two scenes involving "an indulgence in the excitement of beating a (defenseless) man's face into a pulp". The board assigned the film an 18 certificate, limiting the release to adult-only audiences in the UK. The BBFC did not censor any further, considering and dismissing claims that Fight Club contained "dangerously instructive information" and could "encourage anti-social (behavior)". The board decided, "The film as a whole is—quite clearly—critical and sharply parodic of the amateur fascism which in part