Man, what a time to launch a film like “Good Luck, Have Enjoyable, Do not Die.” If sci-fi has historically mirrored our greatest and most urgent considerations of the day, then director Gore Verbinski’s newest may as nicely be the embodiment of a flashing neon signal. Clearly, the concept of synthetic intelligence in films performs very in another way within the 12 months 2026 than at virtually any time previously — significantly when the rising reputation of generative AI has led to Prime Video using inaccurate AI slop to recap “Fallout” episodes, considerations about artists’ rights coming beneath hearth, and Disney torching its own legacy by making a deal with OpenAI, an organization whose main product is constructed on theft.
Given how pervasive this expertise has develop into in on a regular basis life, how might any storyteller hope to carry one thing new to the desk? That is exactly the query I had in thoughts throughout a latest spoiler-free interview with Verbinski over Zoom for “Good Luck, Have Enjoyable, Do not Die.” When the director received his fingers on the script by Matthew Robinson, he knew precisely method it and make this once-futuristic challenge right into a startlingly up to date one. As he informed me, this meant making issues just a little extra related:
“Once I first learn the screenplay, it was in 2020 and it was written — I feel the date on that draft was 2017. Matthew’s unique draft had some AI antagonists in it, however was not at all the place we ended up. That was the brunt of the work we did, that and a few work on Sam [Rockwell’s character’s] backstory. However my private perception in watching and contemporizing that, how AI is infused into our society, it is not a factor that is going to happen sooner or later, it is a factor that is occurring proper now.”
Gore Verbinski made the AI in Good Luck, Have Enjoyable, Do not Die extra relatable than Skynet in Terminator
It ought to come as no shock that Gore Verbinski, the person who successfully turned a theme park ride into one of the most successful blockbuster trilogies of all time in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and subsequently used his clout to make an unique horror gem like “A Treatment for Wellness,” did not hesitate to place his personal spin on the anti-AI subgenre. Many mere mortals would’ve flinched on the notion of competing with the likes of “The Matrix” or “Terminator” within the hearts and minds of audiences. Not Verbinski, who went out of his method so as to add a captivating twist to “Good Luck, Have Enjoyable, Do not Die” and its central villain.
The director clued me in to how he determined to sort out this tough matter and differentiate his story from the plain hallmarks which have come earlier than. As Verbinski defined, it needed to do with the motivations of his AI antagonist:
“So coping with that led me to this concept that, ‘Nicely, what if it is not some Skynet, HAL [9000] killing machine? What if it is a lot, a lot worse? It desires us to love it. It will demand that we prefer it.’ That undeniable fact that it is being born because it’s tasked to maintain us engaged, I feel is actually going to imply it is form of inheriting our worst attributes. So making a villain who simply desires you to love it, [who’s] identical to, ‘Why do not you want me?’, I feel that is actually what makes the movie stand out.”
That actually takes on added which means in an period with creepy, people-pleasing AI chatbots and anti-AI shows like “Pluribus.” “Good Luck, Have Enjoyable, Do not Die” hits theaters on February 13, 2026.
