Gore Verbinski is officially out of directors’ jail, but not just that, it sounds like he’s made a very entertaining, and original film in the process.
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”? is set to be Verbinski’s first film in over nine years. He’s assembled an excellent cast for his comeback vehicle: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, and Juno Temple.
The film centers on a “man from the future” (Rockwell) who arrives at a diner in Los Angeles where he must recruit the precise combination of disgruntled patrons (Richardson, Peña, Beetz, Temple) to join him on a one-night-six-block quest to save the world from the terminal threat of a rogue artificial intelligence.
Our site‘s regular test screener, whom studio heads have been trying to locate, prosecute and imprison, for a few years now, attended the advanced showing of “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”? Here’s their reaction — it sounds like Verbinski might have delivered a major winner.
A clever and original contemporary adventure about how AI will make us (and somewhat is already) complete zombies to the ideas that a virtual reality is more fulfilling than our flawed and angry reality. There’s lots of amazing visual effects, including a very original creature design, Gen-Z zombies and imagery that’s reminiscent of “Annihilation.” By the end, the audience was completely onboard with the movie’s endgame and gave a rowdy applause at the cut to black, which I haven’t seen very much. Very good. Super ambitious. Incredibly visual, adventurous, fast-paced, with a darkly comedic edge and a stellar Sam Rockwell performance.
Before his nine-year hiatus, Verbinski had a mostly successful career as a director with such films as “The Ring,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Rango,” and “The Weather Man.”
However, his career hit a major slump when he directed one of the biggest box-office bombs of all-time, 2013’s “The Lone Ranger” and followed that one up with 2016’s “A Cure For Wellness.” He hasn’t directed a film since.
In 2018, Verbinski was going to direct a film centering around Gambit, and set within the X-Men film universe, but he dropped out of the project. He also had plans to make an animated Netflix feature, “Cattywumpus,” which had to do with cats in outer space; the streamer eventually dropped the project.
Verbinski doesn’t have a perfect track record, but he’s always chosen to make original content, save for one ‘Pirates’ sequel too many, which is why I’m very much looking forward to his new film; it still has no distribution, but will no doubt be shopped around at the Cannes Market next month.
Netflix and Skydance Animation have also called it quits. The two sides announced Monday that they're ending the animated film deal struck back in 2023, framing it as a mutual decision.