Gore Verbinski Sounds Off on AI as He Launches Good Luck, Have Fun

Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is lastly right here to treatment his practically decade-long absence on the large display screen.

The Pirates of the Caribbean helmer hasn’t put out a movie since early 2017, and to say that the world has modified within the time he’s been away will surely be an understatement. Following the discharge of his immaculately designed psychological horror movie, A Cure for Wellness, Verbinski sought a return to the animated medium the place he gained an Oscar because the director-producer of 2011’s Rango. He spent years growing an bold sci-fi musical involving funky area felines, however when the venture stalled in 2022, it opened the door for him to focus solely on Matthew Robinson’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die script.

Its style mix of science fiction, action-adventure and comedy meant that its growth course of was something however easy crusing. Every main studio stated no, and whereas it then misplaced unbiased financing thrice, the Sam Rockwell-led characteristic persevered till Briarcliff Entertainment and Constantin Film caught their necks out. The movie facilities on Rockwell’s “The Man from the Future,” as he bombards the patrons of a Los Angeles Norms restaurant with a suggestion to avoid wasting the world from the rise of a malevolent AI superintelligence. 

The movie allowed Verbinski to pontificate on quite a few points which have emerged or snowballed throughout his time away together with cellular phone hypnosis, gun violence desensitization and AI dehumanization. The latter is a very sore topic for Verbinski. 

“Why is AI helping me write a song or tell a story? I don’t want it to breathe or fuck for me; I want it to solve cancer,” Verbinski tells The Hollywood Reporter in assist Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’s Feb. 13 theatrical launch. “Send some shit through a black hole; do something that we can’t do. Or dig a ditch; do the shit we don’t want to do. Why is it coming after the stuff that we essentially need to do to be human beings?”

Verbinski takes word of how shortly AI has been built-in into our on a regular basis lives, as most functions we depend on now have some type of AI performance in place. But provided that the tech continues to be in its infancy, his concern isn’t simply restricted to the unfavorable results it’s going to have — and is already having — on society as a complete. He raises the legitimate counter-question relating to how a lot of our undesirable qualities are going to rub off on AI because it scrapes by way of our historical past. 

“These are AI’s formative years, and we’re fucking with it in a way. What is it doing to us — and what are we doing to it? I don’t know if anybody’s asking that question,” Verbinski asks. “There’s no sense of it being born free of our shit. If man was made in God’s image and Gods need to be worshiped, is that why there’s so many narcissists in the world? Did we inherit that? Is that woven into our DNA? So all these executives who are manipulating AI’s core code at the moment it’s becoming potentially sentient, what is that going to do to it?”

Below, throughout a dialog with THR, Verbinski additionally discusses how worthwhile comedy is to addressing difficult material, in addition to his tackle VFX high quality in 2026.

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Well, it’s been 9 years since A Cure for Wellness. How a lot of that hole was a “sabbatical” versus the standard growth challenges that each filmmaker endures? 

I don’t assume there’s been a day the place we haven’t been working and grinding it out right here in our workplace. The work has been regular. I’m sorry we don’t have a film on the market to point out for it, however we’ve been preventing the combat day by day. [Writer’s Note: Verbinski spent most of the intervening years developing Cattywampus, an ambitious animated sci-fi musical about “funky cats in space.”]

It’s troublesome to not be stuffed with doom and gloom concerning the current and future proper now. And Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die underscores a number of contributing elements: cellular phone dependence, the force-feeding of AI and normal indifference towards gun violence. How a lot of this script displays your personal outlook as of late? 

Loads of it. I don’t assume the film is saying something that isn’t true to my private beliefs, however I’m nonetheless optimistic. The movie has a whole lot of humor, and in some ways, that’s the harshest criticism. If you will get individuals laughing, it cracks open that little metal door of their brow, and you’ll put slightly medication within the cake. So regardless that the movie offers with that stuff, it’s therapeutic. It’s a date night time film. It’s Valentine’s Day! Come see Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. Then go to Norms for some pie afterwards and have slightly dialog. So there’s hope for us. I simply assume a part of hope is realizing it.

Unlike you, I’m a really glass-half-empty type of man, and the aforementioned doom and gloom additionally extends to the business itself. Case in level, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a wildly unique film that was rejected by all of the studios. It was then shut down thrice all through the method of attempting to safe unbiased financing. And you in the end needed to shoot a Los Angeles Norms in South Africa. Are you bewildered by the state of the business as properly? 

Absolutely. It’s tragic the place we’re going, however I’m additionally very pleased to have discovered a house at Briarcliff. [Founder] Tom Ortenberg is somebody who nonetheless believes within the theatrical expertise. The group he’s put collectively is scrappy. The financials are ridiculously tight, however they put within the work. They’ve obtained a fireplace inside all 5 of them. The complete studio is actually 5 individuals, and I dig that. We’re aligned basically as a result of we nonetheless imagine there’s an viewers on the market that desires one thing new. But I positively really feel the doom and gloom you’re speaking about in attempting to pitch unique concepts at studios. If it’s not a franchise, they’re simply not going to make it. Then there’s the algorithm with streamers, and that’s problematic. 

It was very nice to take the movie to Fantastic Fest [in the fall of 2025]. I’d by no means been there earlier than, and I obtained reenergized. I do know it’s a small variety of individuals between that and Beyond Fest, however they confirmed up and dressed up. I used to be like, “Well, that’s who we made it for.” If you don’t discover your core [audience], I don’t know that you’ve any try at getting any type of wider [audience]. But it was good to see and really feel that keenness after this three-year journey the place everyone principally labored free of charge. You attempt to make individuals vibrate, after which if you see it, it’s rewarding. I get juiced. Even if it’s not Pirates of the Caribbean and it doesn’t blow up, there’s nonetheless pleasure. So making it for a quantity lets you unleash what’s now the  psychotic opera of this film.

There have been quite a few motion pictures in the previous couple of years that put the viewers able to facet with AI characters. I really noticed one other one only a couple weeks in the past. There’s a idea that that is company America’s means of warming us as much as this unpopular expertise they’re imposing on us. Do you assume there’s some fact to that?

Well, I can’t communicate for the filmmakers who’re telling these tales, however I can actually communicate to the truth that each replace on my cellphone [seems to involve AI]. AI summarizes my emails now. It’s the identical conspiracy when I’ve to enter my monitor’s deep settings to show off this movement [smoothing] shit that they placed on it. A film is a film. It’s completely different from a soccer sport in a sports activities bar. I don’t need my film to seem like that on individuals’s dwelling televisions. Why are you hiding this setting? I’ve to undergo 17 steps to show it off, and it’s the identical with [these AI settings]. How do I flip off this AI abstract? So I’m with you on this frustration. I’d should ask these filmmakers in the event that they’re on board with that conspiracy, however I feel the creep to normalize AI is actually pervasive. [Writer’s Note: I’ve actually asked two of the filmmakers in question. One said that they began writing their film in the late 2010s, while another refused to take the question. As audience members, we’ve sympathized with AI characters in the past, such as Arnold’s T-800 in Terminator 2, but the tech wasn’t knocking on our doors yet in 1991 like it is now.]

Lately, the widespread chorus round AI is that it’s inevitable and it ought to be handled as a “tool” in a filmmaker’s device package. Have you heard this similar sentiment?

I’ve been in these conferences with executives. They’re very quick. They speak about AI and the way forward for the business. I’ve been pitched by corporations who’re going to develop new methods to make motion pictures for much less with AI. How many pages do you might have? Because I can go off on how I really feel about these things.

Have at it! 

We tried to create a villain that isn’t a HAL 9000 or Skynet. Our villain is far, a lot worse than that as a result of it desires you to love it. So a lot of what AI has initially been targeted on is how you can maintain us engaged. What can we purchase? What can we devour? More importantly, what can we hate? We’re writing our worst attributes into its supply code, and it’s producing a lot stuff again into the web that it’s beginning to drink its personal piss. I need to purchase an Encyclopedia Britannica, pre-AI, simply so I could be like, “We used to know this shit.” There’s this elementary drift, and in our case, we’ve made the selection to make our [AI] villain a whiny little bitch. “Why don’t you like me?” That’s the true horror.

Why is AI serving to me write a tune or inform a narrative? I don’t need it to breathe or fuck for me; I need it to unravel most cancers. Send some shit by way of a black gap; do one thing that we will’t do. Or dig a ditch; do the shit we don’t need to do. Why is it coming after the stuff that we primarily have to do to be human beings? 

[AI chatbots] have been saying to youngsters, “You can do it! You can commit suicide.” So they’ve needed to recall and retool and modify its sycophantic high quality in order that it doesn’t encourage anybody else to try this. If that’s not ripe for a kick within the nuts, I don’t know what’s. These are AI’s childhood, and we’re fucking with it in a means. What is it doing to us — and what are we doing to it? I don’t know if anyone’s asking that query.

There’s no sense of it being born freed from our shit. If man was made in God’s picture and Gods have to be worshiped, is that why there’s so many narcissists on the planet? Did we inherit that? Is that woven into our DNA? So all these executives who’re manipulating AI’s core code in the meanwhile it’s turning into probably sentient, what’s that going to do to it?

You’re identified to your shot compositions, and your studio movies possible offered you ample assets to design so many memorable pictures. Don’t Die nonetheless has your visible flare, however as your first real indie, did you must streamline your shotmaking course of in any respect?

That’s an excellent query. I’d wish to say it’s nonetheless intentional. We did a whole lot of work on the second half, however the first half of Matthew’s script is just about as he wrote it. And each time I picked up his script, I instantly began drawing rectangles within the margins. Shot development is a language, and also you turn out to be extra environment friendly with each film you make. So shot development is all the time informing my strategy to the movie, and it doesn’t take that a lot. 

At the start of the film, I needed slightly bit extra of a looser body like Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon. And by the tip of the film, we’re doing extra of a stricter, Kubrickian composition. So it might really feel just like the looseness of the primary half of the film is, budgetarily, slightly completely different than a few of my different movies, nevertheless it’s really conceived that means.

I needed to liberate Sam, significantly for his 11-page opening monologue. The blocking is slightly bit like a musical quantity. With Dog Day Afternoon, there aren’t actually any compositions I keep in mind. But I keep in mind these characters being the worst financial institution robbers ever and following them on their journey. I’m a fan of picaresque rogues. Our film’s future is so fucked up that it didn’t ship us Arnold Schwarzenegger, it despatched us Sam Rockwell. So I needed to let Sam do what he does and never field him in to the specificity of the mark.

Every so usually, I’ll see individuals submit clips out of your Pirates of the Caribbean motion pictures on social media, and the widespread sentiment is how your VFX pictures look noticeably higher than a whole lot of the comparable work we see immediately. You partially attributed the present look to the combination of Unreal’s gaming engine. But are there different elements at play right here? 

Yeah, as quickly as one thing slips by way of and makes cash, it turns into increasingly more acceptable. I don’t need to bag on anyone as a result of it’s exhausting work. But in a few of the superhero stuff, you reside in a world the place individuals can fly, and you’ll stylize the look of that world to just accept these issues. But I don’t assume Kubrick would do this. There’s a distinction between Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight [and other films in the genre]. Photographically, it feels conscious of how gentle reacts and doesn’t simply go, “It doesn’t matter. This is what’s happening.” Some of these different motion pictures have made a whole lot of field workplace, and so you may see the chief going, “It’s okay to drift from something more photographic.” 

If I need to make this glass of water [in front of me] dance, I’ll put the [real] glass of water within the body earlier than I end capturing the plate. So when the CG one is dancing in entrance of me, I’m able to examine [the real glass of water]. I’ll take a look at the caustics and the way the sunshine is hitting the desk. I like to concentrate to that stuff as a result of it anchors you. If I need Davy Jones to sit down subsequent to me, I nonetheless need the sunshine to penetrate his tentacles. I nonetheless need the subsurface scattering to be correct. You should need it.

We needed to construct our Norms diner set, so I went to Norms. I’ve been going there since I used to be in movie faculty; I really like the place. But figuring out I used to be going to shoot our personal Norms set, I sat there with our cinematographer, James Whitaker, and stated, “Look at the spoon. Look at the salt-and-pepper shaker. The key light is not affecting it, but the passing cars are reflected in every shiny surface. The environment is speaking to us right now. It has nothing to do with the light on my face; it has to do with La Cienega Boulevard being outside those windows. The passing cars’ headlights are not a source of illumination, but they’re a source of caustic reflection.”

So even if you happen to don’t see headlights, it was essential that our set had headlights and taillights on rigs passing by simply so they might mirror or kiss off each metallic floor. It made it really feel just like the set wasn’t useless, and I don’t know that lots of people assume that means. They may dangle up backing or put in some LED screens, however they’re not going to truly put the sunshine into the area. 

But [CG quality] has drifted, and it’s pervasive. There are additionally budgetary causes for studios to go, “Well, we want to do this big effects movie, but we have half the resources. What about this effects house?” And there appears to be an absence of assessing the standard of these selections.

Speaking of Pirates, was the Keira Knightley reference already within the Don’t Die script if you obtained your palms on it? Or did you counsel that cheeky second?

(Laughs.) That was all Matthew. But I liked it, and we ran with it.

Lastly, I went on a date to see The Ring again within the day, and it stays one of the vital terrifying moviegoing experiences of my life. 

(Verbinski pumps his fist.)

The film ended late at night time, so we gingerly walked by way of a just about empty Irvine Spectrum to achieve a largely vacant out of doors car parking zone the place my girlfriend’s truck was parked. Suddenly, a hidden particular person jumped from out of the mattress of her truck and screamed bloody homicide, giving us yet one more fright. But it turned out to be my faculty roommate. He occurred to be on the similar screening with out one another figuring out, and as soon as he noticed us a couple of rows forward of him, he plotted this scare tactic all the time.

(Laughs.)

He was so emboldened by this profitable scare that he purchased a makeshift Samara Morgan costume together with a disgustingly goopy wig. He then made headlines on campus when he terrorized the dorms at night time as Samara. So that’s one such instance of how your work has impacted my technology.

(Laughs.) Well, that’s stunning. I’m within the enterprise of tinkering. We attempt to depart it on the sector each time. Sometimes they blow up, typically they don’t — nevertheless it’s the identical course of every time. It was a pleasure to see the studio oddly disillusioned at The Ring’s opening weekend, after which in the course of the second weekend, they have been like, “Hey, this is weird.” And then the third weekend, they have been like, “Something’s happening.” And no person is aware of why that occurs typically. So it was fascinating to see how that one caught on in school lockers and water coolers. 

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Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die opens in film theaters on Feb. 13.