UPDATE: Verbinski is officially out of directors’ jail. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”? has started production in South Africa.
EARLIER: Remember last July, when I told you, exclusively, that Gore Verbinski was working on a new project, his first film in over 8 years, titled “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”?
Well, we now have more details. Verbinski has assembled a solid cast for his comeback film, it’ll star Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, and Juno Temple. It’s also set to go to the EFM Market for territory sales.
The film, being dubbed as an “action-adventure” 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.
Verbinski has had a — mostly— successful career as a director with films such as “The Ring,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Rango,” and “The Weather Man.”
However, his career hit a major bump when he directed one of the biggest box-office bombs of all-time, “The Lone Ranger” and followed that one up with 2016’s “A Cure For Wellness.” He hasn’t directed a film since. I still haven’t seen “The Lone Ranger,” but a cult following has emerged these last few years for that one.
In 2018, Verbinski was going to direct a film centering around Gambit, set within the X-Men film universe, but he dropped out of the project. He also had plans to make an animated feature, “Cattywumpus,” which had to do with cats in outer space. The project was previously set up at Netflix but the streamer dropped it. He’s still trying to shop it around.
Verbinski has not always hit the mark with his films, but he’s always chosen to make original content, save for one ‘Pirates’ sequel too many, which makes this latest project of his, at the very least, intriguing enough.