Meet Joe Black is a 1998 American romantic fantasy drama film directed and produced by Martin Brest, starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, and Claire Forlani.

The screenplay was written by Bo Goldman, Kevin Wade, Ron Osborn, and Jeff Reno, and is loosely based on the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday, which is itself based on the 1929 play Death Takes a Holiday by Walter Ferris, which is in turn an English-language adaptation of the 1924 Italian play La morte in vacanza by Alberto Casella.

His younger daughter Susan, a resident in internal medicine, has a relationship with Drew, a member of Bill's board.

As Bill contemplates Susan's planned marriage to Drew and realizes that she is not deeply in love, he suggests that she wait to be swept off her feet.

Materializing, the voice identifies itself as "Death" and now inhabits the body of the young man Susan met at the coffee shop.

They both return to the dinner table and under pressure to make an introduction, Bill names the young man "Joe Black".

Intrigued by Joe's naivete, Susan realizes he is different from the young man she met in the coffee shop.

At Susan's hospital, Joe interacts with a terminally ill woman, who wishes to die to escape her constant physical pain.

When Joe mentions that he loves Susan (whose care she is under), they discuss the meaning of life and she tells him the danger of meshing two worlds.

The penthouse interiors and Parrish Communications offices were sets built at the 14th Regiment Armory in the South Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.

[4] A two-hour version was made to show on television and airline flights, by cutting most of the plotline involving Bill Parrish's business.

[13][14] Meet Joe Black earned a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Remake or Sequel,[15] being a takeoff from the film Death Takes a Holiday.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Meet Joe Black is pretty to look at and benefits from an agreeable cast, but that isn't enough to offset this dawdling drama's punishing three-hour runtime.

[17] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore graded the film "A−" on a scale of A to F.[18][19] In retrospect, Brad Pitt views Meet Joe Black as a low point in his career, feeling he lacked direction at the time.