‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ Cast and Crew Interview

(L to R) Zazie Beetz, Michael Peña and director Gore Verbinski discuss ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’.

Opening in theaters on February 13th is the sci-fi comedy ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’, which was directed by Gore Verbinski (‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’) and stars Oscar winner Sam Rockwell (’Iron Man 2’), Haley Lu Richardson (‘The White Lotus’), Zazie Beetz (‘Deadpool 2’), Michael Peña (‘Ant-Man’), and Juno Temple (‘Venom: The Last Dance’).

“Time is running out. Are you ready to join the revolution?”

Release Date: Feb 13, 2026

Run Time: 2 hr 14 min

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with director Gore Verbinski, Zazie Beetz, Michael Peña, and Haley Lu Richardson about their work on ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’, why Verbinski wanted to make the movie and his choice to use a chapter structure, Beetz, Peña, and Richardson’s first reactions to the script, Beetz and Richardson’s experience working with Verbinski on set, and what it was like for Richardson to work with the rest of the ensemble cast.

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‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ director Gore Verbinski. Photo: Briarcliff Entertainment.

Moviefone: To begin with, Gore, can you talk about your first reaction to the screenplay and why you wanted to make it?

Gore Verbinski: I thought Matthew’s opening monologue scared me, but also was brilliant. Matthew Robinson, our writer. I think you normally don’t start a movie with an 11-page monologue. I was nervous, but then I was also aware of the fact that the audience is like the patrons of norms. If we pull this off, they’re coming for the ride. So, breaking that down, dissecting that and knowing immediately I wanted Sam. I don’t think there’s anybody else who could do it. Sam Rockwell just has that ability to underpin all of that with a sense of some deep pain. There’s something honest underneath all of it. It’s not just exposition. So that was probably what first initially drew me to the project. Then we did a lot of work. Matthew’s draft was written in 2017, so AI was still something on the horizon back then. I think I was like, “Well, it’s here.” So, we needed to change all of that. The antagonist of the movie I think had to be more relevant to what we’re experiencing in our daily lives.

MF: Zazie, what was your first reaction to the screenplay and the dystopian future it predicts?

Zazie Beetz: I get sent a bunch of different scripts all the time, which is wonderful, and most are fine. The gift really is, I feel like once a year or once even every two years, you read a script where you’re like, “Oh my God. Hell yes.” I talk a lot about if something isn’t a “Hell yes” then it’s a “Hell no” when you’re choosing projects. But usually, it’s gray. There’s a lot of things you must muddle through and figure out what really is the right fit or not. It’s rarely ever just yes. I felt that way the first 10 pages of this script, reading the diner scene, which is the first 10 minutes of the movie and picturing Sam doing this and with Gore at the helm. I was like, “This is just sparkling for me.” I also just resonated so much with the message, and I thought audiences would too. I just was like, “I need to be a part of this project.”

(L to R) Michael Peña, Sam Rockwell, and Zazie Beetz star in ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’. Photo: Briarcliff Entertainment.

MF: Michael, did you feel the same way about your character and the project when you first read the script?

Michael Peña: Yeah, absolutely. I know that there’s some people that don’t read everything they’re offered or anything that they’re being considered for. I tend to do that. I love reading scripts from The Black List. They’re good, and I’ve done a couple of those movies, which I think is awesome, and I recommend any actor or producer, read everything off The Black List because it’s the best of the best. But I love reading scripts and I love story in general. Like Zazie said, there’s a couple of times where you read a script and you’re like, “I love it”, when you don’t exactly know why you want to do a movie. It’s just like a vibe. There are some feels attached to it. I was like, “Wow, I can’t sleep.” I’ve had that with ‘Crash’, I had that with ‘End of Watch’, and I had that with this. I’m like, “I just want to be a part of it. I don’t know why.” A lot of times when they’re not huge budgets, you’re not being compensated crazy, but the passion I think shows up.

MF: Haley, what was your first reaction to the screenplay and what it says about the world we live in and our possible future?

Haley Lu Richardson: Well, it says a lot, and my reactions were a lot. I keep saying that this was the funniest script I’ve ever read, but also the most unsettling. It’s a crazy movie. Gore’s been describing it from day one as his psychotic opera, which it very much is. It’s psychotic and ridiculous, but in a way that’s what makes it unsettling is that it’s not unrealistic. The themes in the movie are direct reflections of our reality. The things we have experienced already in our existence and the things we’re imminently up for, I don’t necessarily think when we were filming it was a potential future, but now it kind of feels like this is literally what’s happening, and that’s a lot to process.

Haley Lu Richardson stars in ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’.

MF: Gore, can you talk about the unique chapter structure of the film and getting a chance to tell each character’s story in a specific way?

GV: I think there are films like ‘Pulp Fiction’, I suppose. There are films that do that, that go back. You don’t really have a three-act structure when you do that. Sometimes you have, particularly in our case, we have five narrative threads that are all pulling themselves together. It’s tricky because I think when I first started out in this business, they would say, “You can’t mix genres. You can never mix a genre.” But that’s all we do now. There are romantic comedies with vampires. All we do is mix genres now. Then they’re like, “Well, you can’t mix tone.” But can you? Can you mix tone? We have a lot of tonalities in this movie. I think that’s what keeps you guessing. There used to be a thing where, tone was the thing that had to be consistent because otherwise you’ll break something. But I think if you take five stories with slightly different tones, you can weave them together. They’re all relative to our third act. They’re all drawing us towards this sense of inevitable. So, it was challenging, and it was fun to play with that because I think we have a lot of humor, we have a lot of social commentary, and we have a lot of taboos that we’re dealing with. So, holding that all together, there was not going to be one sort of tonal package that was going to make that work.

MF: Haley, what was your experience like working with Gore on set and watching the specific way he makes movies?

HLR: Well, I was pleasantly surprised by Gore’s boyish inner child and excitement. His passion is so giddy and childlike, in a beautiful way. We called him “Night Shoot Gore” because he would come out and have a cigar and be rabid with his monitor on top of a roof, which was probably unsafe because he wasn’t harnessed in or anything. He’d just be standing on a roof with his cigar and his monitor watching a scene of us fighting off teenage zombies and he’d be saying all the lines to himself and shaking. He’s manic and he’s so excited. When you’re working with someone that’s the leader, that’s excited and cares, he just keeps the energy up. He was as protective of Ingrid as I was of Ingrid, which is also new for me. Sometimes I feel like I must actively stand up and fight for protecting a character and things that they need, artistically or emotionally in moments. But Gore was actively protective of these characters in this movie. In the trailer, it says, “From Unhinged Gore Verbinski.” I’m like, yeah, that’s accurate in the best way.

(L to R) Asim Chaudhry, Juno Temple, Michael Peña, Sam Rockwell, Zazie Beetz and Haley Lu Richardson star in ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’. Photo: Briarcliff Entertainment.

MF: Zazie, what was your experience like working with Gore on this project?

ZB: Gore, I would say is truly the captain of his ship. He has a very clear vision, and I think that’s also very important for a movie like this where there’s a lot of heightened energy, a lot of hectic and chaotic energy where I feel like the flow could get lost if there isn’t someone who’s very clear about how he wants this structured. So, it was great to have him to lean on if I had questions about tonal elements or about where my character was at. He had thought this movie through. You could really lean on him for that if you felt like, “Wait, where am I at?” Mike and I, we did a lot of work together, but he was this rock-solid board you could be like, “Okay, you’re telling me to do what?” So that was good.

MF: Finally, Haley, what was it like for you working with Sam Rockwell, Juno Temple, Zazie, Michael, and the rest of the ensemble cast?

HLR: Honestly, I literally couldn’t have been with a better group of humans. Truly, we had so much fun. I felt a similar thing on ‘The White Lotus’ when it’s like, we’re all so different. We’re all different ages. We all have different life experience, but somehow you put us all together and we have a night out drinking and dancing and it works. It’s the best time. We had so many night shoots on this movie. It was just a blast. I just really love those guys. We had fun together and I also felt safe with them. I love them all for different reasons and think they’re amazing in the movie.

(L to R) Juno Temple, Zazie Beetz, Michael Peña, Sam Rockwell, and Haley Lu Richardson star in ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’. Photo: Briarcliff Entertainment.

What is the plot of ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’?

A man (Sam Rockwell) 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.