FC25 is set about twenty-five years after the book and movie Fight Club are released. It starts from the idea that the problems in the original story never went away. The automobile recall algorithm is basically unchanged.
The story follows Marla in 2025. She is older now, a cancer survivor, and working inside the pharmaceutical world. She is not trying to destroy the system from the outside anymore, but rather through internal bureaucracy. She is still chaotic, obsessive and self-destructive, but very high functioning and has achieved considerable financially success.
Taza is a young Black queer trans/nonbinary refugee from Uganda. They fled while the country was voting on the death penalty for being gay. Taza is a fashion designer and filmmaker, and they become Marla’s partner in crime trying to keep a small foundation alive for queer refugees in East Africa. Together, they are making two films: a serious documentary about queer history in Africa, and FC25, a self-aware mockumentary that turns their own lives into a strange sequel to Fight Club.
The plot follows Marla and Taza as almost every system they depend on fails in 2025. USAID funding collapses. Their grant work falls apart. Their film stalls. A Wikipedia meeting turns hostile. Taza grows exhausted from constant political targeting. Both of them lose financial stability. A fashion show gets attention but no money. Marla’s final big move is a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical company ClairVie, performing miniature puppet shows about the case to build pressure, but no one picks up on the story and she loses the case.
The main departure from Fight Club is that these characters are not violent or demand conformity. They are artists, builders, and survivors of extreme violence themselves. They are facing trauma and danger far worse than what the original characters faced, but instead of mayhem, they want to heal. The ending returns to an airport, where the story starts. Marla helps a struggling mother with her child. The next generation after Fight Club is about fortitude, love and becoming the hero of your own story.