Gore Verbinski’s (The Ring, A Cure for Wellness) latest sci-fi thriller Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die dares to confront a world hurtling toward extinction, effortlessly mining hilariously nihilistic humour from the collapse. Briarcliff Entertainment will release the film exclusively in theaters on February 13, 2026, boasting a cast game-for-a-laugh and all-in on the absurdity that includes Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, and Juno Temple.
The film follows a man claiming to be from the future who takes patrons of a Los Angeles diner hostage while hunting for unlikely recruits to save the world. Verbinski directs from a screenplay by Matthew Robinson (The Invention of Lying, Love and Monsters) and produces alongside Robert Kulzer, Erwin Stoff, Oly Obst, and Denise Chamian.
Beneath its high-concept premise, the film presents an alarmingly disarming vision of humanity scrolling toward extinction, filtering the consumerist delirium of They Live, the zombie capitalism of Dawn of the Dead, and the techno-fatalism of Terminator 2 through a contemporary lens, rewiring the story for the Dopamine Stream Generation and pushing it into gleefully unhinged algorithmic overdrive (read our full review).
Ahead of the film’s release, CinemaChords spoke with Verbinski about the film’s sharply unsettling absurdist humour, and the deeper question it raises: whether human creativity can endure – or even flourish – amid the accelerating rise of AI, and what it might take for society to impose order on the chaos of its own making.
