If the end of the world was going to begin with a booth, a cup of coffee, and the wrong guy walking through the door, it would probably look like “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die“—the new sci-fi action-comedy from visionary pop filmmaker Gore Verbinski.
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The premise doesn’t bother with subtlety. A man (Sam Rockwell) claiming to be from the future storms an L.A. diner and takes the patrons hostage in search of unlikely recruits for a mission that’s already gone sideways. He isn’t bargaining for money or leverage; he’s forcing a roomful of strangers to choose whether they’re going to follow him into a story that sounds insane—or stay seated while the timeline collapses around them. The urgency lands fast: he insists an AI-driven apocalypse is coming, and the only way to stop it is to draft a team right here, right now, out of whoever happens to be drinking coffee under fluorescent lights.
For Verbinski, the “hostage situation as group interview” setup feels like a perverse extension of the director who once makes mainstream nightmare fuel with “The Ring” and rides blockbuster mayhem in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.” This one suggests a gonzo, high-concept sprint where the clock stays visible, the stakes keep escalating, and the comedy comes from people trying to act rational inside an irrational scenario.
The ensemble is built for that kind of tonal knife-walking. Sam Rockwell leads the cast alongside Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, and Juno Temple. The screenplay is credited to Matthew Robinson, with producers including Robert Kulzer, Denise Chamian, Erwin Stoff, and Oly Obst.
In the U.S., Briarcliff Entertainment handles distribution and has set a February 13, 2026 release which is only in theaters. The film premiered at Fantastic Fest last September and heads toward wide release with Geoff Zanelli on the score, a longtime Verbinski collaborator now credited as the primary composer here. Either way, it’s built to play loud first on big screens. Watch the new trailer below.
