Gore Verbinski Is Finally Back in First Trailer for Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
It has been entirely too long since Hollywood last managed to bring us a film from the adaptable and iconoclastic visual artist that is Gore Verbinski–nine years at this point, in fact, since 2016’s psychological horror A Cure for Wellness, which is an eternity for a fickle, moviegoing public. He’s had some projects fall apart in the interim; perhaps most notably the Channing Tatum-fronted Gambit, leaving us wondering when the director would again take a film across the finish line. We’re thrilled, then, to have Verbinski, the filmmaker behind everything from Mouse Hunt and Rango to The Ring and Pirates of the Caribbean finally and properly back in the saddle for February’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, which debuted not long ago at Fantastic Fest to strong reviews. There’s certainly been no shortage of A.I.-centric sci-fi feature film premises in recent memory, but perhaps this is the one we’ve been waiting for to skewer our current zeitgeist appropriately. As the terse official synopsis puts it: “A man from the future travels to the past and recruits the patrons of a Los Angeles diner he arrives in to help combat a rogue artificial intelligence.”
That’s precisely what we see in the first trailer below, as Sam Rockwell’s “The Man From the Future” strolls into the greasy spoon, looking like a disheveled bum, and explains to the patrons that he comes from a future in which rampant use of artificial intelligence has essentially turned human minds into sludge, leaving many people in semi-permanent vegetative states as they simply consume content in an alternate reality. We must note that the actual depiction of this does feel rather uncannily similar to the art of writer-illustrator Simon Stålenhag, whose book was turned into Netflix’s utterly banal The Electric State earlier this year. We have faith that Verbinski’s film probably doesn’t involve a robotic Mr. Peanut as one of its primary characters, however.
Rockwell is joined by a supporting cast that includes Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz and Juno Temple, all of whom we see assembled below as they’re forced to take on hordes of Gen Z screen junkies who seem to have become something akin to zombified by their devices. It all appears to devolve into utter anarchy in the streets, with a closing shot appearing what appears to be … a building-sized horse hoof crushing a car? Alright then–Verbinski is apparently pulling no punches, and we can only imagine how Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die will evolve its premise. It’s due to hit theaters on Feb. 13, 2026. In the meantime, check out the first trailer below.
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