Fighting with My Family

Fighting with My Family is a 2019 biographical sports comedy-drama film, based on the 2012 documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family, depicting the WWE career of professional wrestler Paige. The film stars Florence Pugh as Paige, along with Jack Lowden, Nick Frost, Lena Headey and Vince Vaughn, and is written and directed by Stephen Merchant. Dwayne Johnson produces and also appears in the film.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 28, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on February 14, 2019. It received positive reviews and has grossed $39 million.

Plot
In 2002, in Norwich, England, UK, 10-year-old Zak Bevis is engrossed by the WWF (now WWE) King of the Ring pay-per-view event until his younger sister Saraya changes the channel to her favorite program, Charmed. The siblings wrestle, urged on by their parents Rick and Julia. Rick books the children for their first wrestling match where Saraya, initially reluctant to wrestle a boy, goes on to win as planned.

At 18, competing under the ring name “Britani Knight”, Saraya and her brother “Zak Zodiac” help their parents train prospective wrestlers while working toward their own promotion. Rick and Julia, struggling financially, ask WWE trainer Hutch Morgan to sign the siblings. He finally agrees to a tryout before a SmackDown taping at The O2 Arena, and tells Saraya to find a different name as they "already have a Britani". The siblings receive advice from Dwayne Johnson, and Saraya adopts the name Paige from her favorite character on Charmed.

The two try out with several other wrestlers and are all belittled by Morgan. He ultimately chooses Paige over the rest, despite her attempt to have Zak signed as well. With her brother’s encouragement, Paige leaves for America while Zak continues wrestling on the British independent circuit, assisting his parents’ wrestling school, and tending to his girlfriend and newborn son.

Arriving at NXT in Florida, Paige has difficulty adjusting to the WWE style of entertainment – chiefly, the absence of intergender competition and the inexperience of her fellow female trainees Jeri-Lynn, Kirsten, & Maddison. Paige struggles with performing promos and Morgan’s constant belittlement. Morgan makes it clear to Zak that he will never be signed to WWE, and Zak falls into a depression. Paige discovers her parents are selling merchandise of her likeness without her permission and have booked her in a match against Zak scheduled for her Christmas break.

At an NXT live event and her in-ring debut, Paige is heckled by the crowd and freezes up, leaving the ring in tears. She decides to bleach her hair blonde and spray tan to look more like her fellow trainees, which only causes more friction between them. After failing an obstacle course, Paige lashes out at the trainees for gossiping about her when they were actually discussing Kirsten, who has been away from her daughter in order to give her a better life.

Morgan tells Paige that her brother’s future in WWE would only have been as enhancement talent and signing would have ruined his life, implying that it did the same to him. Morgan encourages Paige to quit and return to her family for a happier life. She travels home for the Christmas break. Just before the match against her brother, Paige tells Zak she is leaving WWE. Angry that she is giving up the dream he failed to achieve himself, Zak goes off-script, defeats Paige and then tells their parents her plans to quit, devastating Ricky. After the family find Zak in a drunken bar fight, Paige admits that Morgan declined to sign Zak to protect him and he needs to focus on what is important in life; his family and coaching children who look up to him. Paige changes her mind after Zak berates her for giving up on their shared dream and she returns to Florida and her original appearance.

She drastically improves in training, befriending and encouraging her fellow trainees. Zak returns to training his parents’ students. Morgan brings the trainees to WrestleMania XXX, where Paige is booked in a suite with The Rock and learns she will make her Raw debut the following night against WWE Divas Champion AJ Lee, as recommended by Morgan. Paige makes her Raw debut and again freezes up, but Lee starts the match and unexpectedly puts the Divas Championship on the line. With her family watching on TV, Paige wins the match and the title, finally comfortable enough to say a promo, "This is MY house!".

An epilogue explains that Paige remains the youngest Divas Champion and was an early leader in the ongoing Women's Revolution, that one of Zak's trainees, who was blind, became a wrestler, and pokes fun at The Rock's movie career and Rick selling shares in the family business. The closing credits include footage from the family’s 2012 documentary and Paige’s debut match.

Cast
Additionally, WWE wrestlers Big Show, Sheamus and The Miz make appearances as themselves, while an uncredited actor played John Cena. Several other WWE wrestlers (including Cena himself) appear in archival footage throughout the film.

Production
On 7 February 2017, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Dwayne Johnson and Stephen Merchant had teamed with WWE Studios and Film4 to produce a film based on the life of Saraya "Paige" Bevis, a professional wrestler with the WWE. Merchant would write and direct the film, while Johnson would cameo in the film and executive produce. In the days after the announcement, the main cast was revealed: Florence Pugh as Saraya, Jack Lowden as Saraya's brother Zak, and Lena Headey and Nick Frost as their parents. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the distribution rights on February 10 for US$17.5 million. On 14 February, Johnson announced that Vince Vaughn had been cast, and filming would commence the following day. In-ring scenes were filmed after WWE Raw on 20 February at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Filming also took place around Bracknell, specifically the Harmans Water area, Norwich, England, with locations around the city used in the film, as well as the coastal town of Great Yarmouth.

Like many Hollywood-backed biographical films, the film took several liberties with Paige's journey with WWE. Paige's time in NXT was kept minimal with no mention of her reign as NXT Women's Champion, and several characters were fictional, including Hutch Morgan. Additionally, Paige had previously failed a WWE tryout before being successful in another. Johnson himself never met Paige (or any of the Bevis/Knight family) until seeing the original documentary in 2012, which contradicts the film's portrayal of Johnson meeting Paige and Zak backstage of a WWE event in England; Johnson himself had just returned to WWE in 2011 after a seven-year absence when Paige signed with WWE in April 2011.

Release
Fighting with My Family premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on January 28. It was released in the United States on February 14, 2019, in four theatres in Los Angeles and New York, and expanded to a wide release on February 22, 2019. It was released on February 27, 2019 in the United Kingdom.

Box office
Fighting with My Family has grossed US$23 million in the United States and Canada, and US$16.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of US$39.1 million, against a production budget of US$11 million.

In its limited opening weekend, Fighting with My Family made $162,567 from four theaters over the four-day President's Day weekend. The film expanded to 2,711 theaters the following weekend and made $2.6 million on its first Friday wide, including $450,000 from Thursday night previews, and went on to gross $8 million for the weekend, finishing fourth at the box office. In its second weekend of wide release, the film made $4.7 million, dropping 40% and finishing seventh.

Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 92% based on 199 reviews, with an average rating of 7.23/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Much like the sport it celebrates, Fighting with My Family muscles past clichés with a potent blend of energy and committed acting that should leave audiences cheering." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 83% and a 57% "definite recommend."

Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com opined in a three-out-of-four star review: "Even though Fighting with My Family is undoubtedly about branding the WWE as a fantasy factory, its biggest strengths are its wit and surprisingly big heart."