Berlin<\/a> Film Festival.<\/p>\n\n\tWhat follows is Rockwell and his merry band of misfits on a madcap romp\u00a0through a dystopian landscape for a showdown with the future\u2019s artificial nemesis. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die, based on a screenplay by Matthew Robinson, also stars Haley Lu Richardson, Juno Temple, Zazie Beetz and Michael Pena and is produced by Constantine and Briarcliff Entertainment.<\/p>\n
\n\tAhead of a Feb. 13 theatrical release, Verbinski talked to THR about his big screen return, the perils and promises of AI running and destroying our lives, and whether women will save the world: \u201cI would say fuck yes. And I think my mom would agree,\u201d he declares. <\/p>\n
\n\tAfter being away for a decade with a movie release, how does it feel to be back?<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s not like I ever stopped, just because there\u2019s not been a film released in that time. \u00a0I\u2019ve been working daily on music and lyrics for a big animated musical, and breaking down character design and visual effects for an adaptation of a George RR Martin short story called Sand Kings. We\u2019ve been mapping out an eight-episode adaptation of Alfred Bester\u2019s The Stars My Destination. We\u2019ve been crafting an Edward Gorey story, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, among several other completely original ideas. We have a nice little Bauhaus over here at Blind Wink in Pasadena. And I enjoy coming in every day and tinkering and making things, art and music. But when I agree to do a film, I know I\u2019m going to open a vein and leave it all on the field. And I I will do that for any of the things that I\u2019m passionate about, but not always for something that comes in from a studio or an agency. So Matthew\u2019s (Robinson) script was an exception. I just felt it felt urgent and mad and reckless and something I wanted to fully invest in.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Asim Chaudhry, Juno Temple, Michael Pe\u00f1a, Sam Rockwell, Zazie Beetz and Haley Lu Richardson in \u2018Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die.\u2019<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen first reading Robinson\u2019s screenplay, were you concerned with opening a movie with a long monologue?<\/p>\n
\n\tI love it when people ask me, what is the film based on? And I get to say a script. It\u2019s like such a rare and wondrous thing. When I first read Matthew\u2019s script in 2020, it had been kicking around for a while. You normally don\u2019t start a movie with an 11-page opening monologue. I like doing things I\u2019m not sure how to do. And it sort of grabbed me. And I\u2019ve always been curious, and there\u2019s a cost to curiosity that I\u2019m sort of willing to embrace. I love burned fingers, but I\u2019m still drawn to the light, and I think that opening monologue grabbed me right away.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film is timely in tackling artificial intelligence. How hard was it to be current in portraying AI as an evolving technology from script to screen?<\/p>\n
\n\tMatthew and I did a bit of work from 2020 to 2022, mostly in the second half, really solidifying The Man From the Future\u2019s backstory and addressing when he initially wrote (the screenplay) in 2017, his version of AI. We clearly had to make it more relevant to the AI that\u2019s in our life right now, that\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n
\n\tHow do you personally feel about AI: friend or foe?<\/p>\n
\n\tI could go on and on about my feelings about AI. Look, in our in our story, the future is so fucked up, it didn\u2019t send us Arnold Schwarzenegger. It sent us Sam Rockwell. That\u2019s kind of the state of affairs in our future: you want a hero, and all the heroes are dead. Sorry, this is who we got. And I love that. I love the rogue. I\u2019m just a fan of that type of character. But getting back to your AI question, I think it has to do with what is our particular future. I don\u2019t think our AI is some Skynet, Hal 2000. It\u2019s not a clinical killing machine. I was always fascinated with this idea that it\u2019s going to be much worse. It\u2019s going to want us to like it. It\u2019s sort of been tasked with trying to keep us engaged. And our worst attributes are sort of being hardwired into its source code. There\u2019s also a little bit of what are we doing to it, right? We\u2019re plotting and prodding and poking and adjusting the sycophantic nature of it. We\u2019re adjusting, we\u2019re playing with it. And we haven\u2019t even seen 30 of these AI agents. We haven\u2019t seen them exist. We haven\u2019t seen them become sentient and learned, oh, maybe we shouldn\u2019t do those things at the moment of they\u2019re becoming fully formed. It\u2019s going to have mommy issues.<\/p>\n
Given that peril, should governments regulate AI?<\/p>\n
\n\tI don\u2019t think as a director, I\u2019m in the position to preach. I have a lot of opinions, and I would share them with you over a cocktail. I like a lot of opinions, and I like to hear other people\u2019s opinions about AI. I\u2019m concerned with why it\u2019s coming after storytelling and music and things like that. These are things that I need to do as a human. Don\u2019t breathe for me. Don\u2019t take away things that are essential to my being. Cure cancer, send DNA through a black hole, stable fusion? Go for it. There are a lot of things I think it can be helpful with. But I also think it\u2019s ingesting everything from the internet and then spitting stuff back out so quickly, that it\u2019s starting to drink its own piss. And you get this sort of two-degree course correction that makes me want to desperately buy an Encyclopedia Britannica that\u2019s pre-AI, just to be able to go, hey, we used to know this shit.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tGore Verbinski<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film\u2019s title, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die, suggests ordinary people are on their own in navigating AI.<\/p>\n
Somebody was asking me the other day, why this movie now? And I feel like the world is screaming the answer. We\u2019re all sensing there\u2019s a tsunami coming and there are those who live in fear and those who live in denial, and the rest of us are going to have to surf this thing. We\u2019re going to have to navigate the chop. That\u2019s the mantra of our time. It\u2019s 2026. Good luck. Have fun. Don\u2019t die. We\u2019re all going to have to drop in. \u00a0It\u2019s coming, right? You could try to stop it. You could also pretend it\u2019s not going to change everything. I think both of those are foolish. The rest of us are going to desperately try to come up with our own sort of smorgasbord: I\u2019ll take this, but not that. I\u2019ll pass on that, but I\u2019ll have a double dose of that. We\u2019re going to need to control that aspect of it.<\/p>\n
\n\tAI is now insinuating itself into the movie-making process. You\u2019ve been impacted by that?<\/p>\n
\n\tTo be clear, there\u2019s no AI used in the making of this film. We had to study it and kind of future-proof it. I mean, we started shooting in 2023. Already, what you can do on your phone is radically different than what you could do two years ago. So we had to look ahead and kind of create things that felt like they might have been created from AI, but we weren\u2019t using it.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2026, AI is a technical and creative reality in moviemaking. For you as well? <\/p>\n
\n\tI\u2019m in a lot of meetings about AI in the industry. And the longer I talk about it, the more you\u2019re going to catch contradictions, which I think are healthy. There\u2019s a lot of gray. You have actors rightfully saying you\u2019re stealing my art. And you have corporations worried about being sued because one pixel of Mickey Mouse\u2019s ear might be in that thing that (AI) is making. And then you have visual effects companies talking about why can\u2019t we use it because of copyright, but the consumer can, you\u2019re putting us out of business. All of those things are happening. And you have, Meta and Chat GTP saying if we don\u2019t do it, the Chinese will. Conversations are happening. \u00a0And as a storyteller and a filmmaker, I have very specific things that it could be useful for, but nobody\u2019s paying attention yet.<\/p>\n
\n\tIs your concern for AI less about speeding up the movie-making process, making it less costly or more efficient, than whether working with your needs makes for a quality film?<\/p>\n
\n\tI think, fundamentally, if an AI agent is trying to say, I\u2019m going to make you a Gore Verbinski film, oh, you want a Chris Nolan film, or you want a David Fincher film, I can make one of those for you. It\u2019s missing the point. Like we\u2019re all desperately trying not to repeat ourselves. It\u2019s fundamental. Every time we go out, we\u2019re like, I don\u2019t want to do that again. Everyone is trying to not do these things we\u2019ve done before, we know how to do that. Otherwise, we should sell real estate for a living. It\u2019s going to be chasing something, instead of doing what we\u2019re all trying to do.<\/p>\n
\n\tHow did the film\u2019s narrative \u2013 opening with a monologue, then showing back stories for main characters on how AI brought them to The Man From The Future\u2019s revolution and then a roller coaster ride experience for audiences \u2013 evolve?<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen you look at this man (Sam Rockwell) coming into Norms, claiming to be from the future, looking like he might have crawled out of a dumpster \u2014 that could happen at Norms tomorrow. And yet by the end of that monologue, he\u2019s convincing the patrons to come with him. That\u2019s very much what the film has to do with the audience. Do you trust this protagonist to take you on a journey? Do you trust this movie to take you on a journey? So shaping that and getting that to sort of sing is almost like breaking down a musical number, breaking it in five acts. When is all hope lost? When are we climbing back? Where are the dips? Where are the valleys? Where is the storytelling potion? So breaking all that all down, breaking it into shots, recording the audio over and over and over again \u2014 kind of using tools I use in an animated movie, in a way \u2014 is how I approached that.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhat went into making the opening scene and monologue work for audiences?<\/p>\n
\n\tWe made sure the entire set was a dance floor, so we didn\u2019t have to lay a track between setups. We could keep Sam exhausted and keep the momentum. It was all about momentum. And that poor suit we made for him, that weighed like 40 pounds and we don\u2019t let him take it off. We\u2019re ready! We\u2019re ready to go to the next setup! So keeping that energy and fluidity and then building the set actually based on where he needed to be, to get to what counter, to what character, when we go in behind the counter, when are we in a booth. And it\u2019s been really nice in screenings to have a film like this find its audience, and hear audiences cheer at the end of that sequence. They\u2019re going along for the ride. And along the journey. You know, he\u2019s been here 117 times. We\u2019re not telling those stories. We\u2019re telling this one. So something\u2019s different tonight.<\/p>\n
\n\tAmong your characters, the men, outside of Sam Rockwell, look scared and the women do the heavy-lifting to save the world. Do you think women will ultimately save the world?<\/p>\n
\n\tI would say fuck yes. And I think my mom would agree.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die\u2019<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment<\/p>\n
\n\tEven with a low budget, you still went for special effects thrills typical of blockbusters. How did you manage that?<\/p>\n
\n\tWe had to be very clever with that. First, I\u2019m very lucky to have Constantine and Briarcliff step up. Because there was no other way to get this movie made. And I just feel lucky that we found believers that still have faith in the theatrical process. It did mean it was going to be scrappy. Really, really scrappy. So we tried, wherever possible, to keep the small portions of the movie small. And I\u2019ve always thought of the film as sort of this twist on Dog Day Afternoon. I mean, Sonny and Sal are the worst bank robbers, but you follow them through that entire movie. There\u2019s something small about that, coming into Norms. And then by the end of the movie, we\u2019re getting closer and closer and closer to this thing, to the antagonist. And that justifies a sort of move from the Sidney Lumet frame \u2014 \u00a0It\u2019s about acting. It\u2019s about performance. It\u2019s not about the shot, even though it is, but it\u2019s deceptive. And then as you\u2019re getting closer and closer to the antagonist, there might be a film like (Japanese animated cyberpunk action film) Akira, where you\u2019re saying, okay, as an inspiration point,\u00a0that\u2019s what we\u2019re getting. We\u2019re being drawn to something that is more enigmatic and surreal and you can\u2019t quite grasp what\u2019s happening or what\u2019s coming. That was always the plan. It was really, really tough to do. We used a very small visual effects company, which I really liked out of Copenhagen, called Ghost. We put them to task, and they came through. But it\u2019s like that old saying, if you can answer the question, why must I tell this story? You\u2019re going to figure out a way to do it with sock puppets and the lights you can carry in the back of a station wagon. You\u2019re going to will it into existence somehow.<\/p>\n
\n\tYou were saying you don\u2019t want to do the same movie over again, and you\u2019ve made it clear you\u2019re not interested in directing another Pirates of the Caribbean. What are you working on next?<\/p>\n
I think I\u2019m going to go on sabbatical, to be honest with you, after this. But I still have a lot of passionate ideas. It\u2019s difficult out there right now for original material. The streamers have an algorithm that they\u2019re shackled to. And studios are really risk-averse with big IP or franchises. So this has been a real education. This is my first, I would say, indie. But it may be the only place left to tell a story like this one. And I\u2019d like to tell other ones that are equally genre-defined, I guess. You\u2019re not quite sure where they fit. There\u2019s a wonderful landscape to wander through in that realm of what\u2019s over here. Everybody else is taking care of everything out there. All those movies are getting made.<\/p>\n
Now you\u2019re onto Berlin for a European premiere. How does that feel?<\/p>\n
I think we\u2019re going to be a small fish, which was always the plan. Our economics are built on that, and hopefully we\u2019ll feel okay along with these bigger boys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gore Verbinski has only returned to the big screen after a decade away from directing huge blockbusters like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[12268,191587,191588,49,48,75,77,337,18110],"class_list":{"0":"post-477197","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-berlin-2026","10":"tag-berlin-international-film-festival","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-international","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-sam-rockwell"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}