Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’s Journey to Display screen, Gore Verbinski’s Return

Win, lose or draw on the field workplace, in relation to guaranteeing films from a time-tested tentpole filmmaker like Gore Verbinski, ya gotta again the director when you’re a movie financier, and ya gotta make it loud by going theatrical when you’re a distributor.

Such is the case for Rango Oscar winner Gore Verbinski’s return to the large display after 10 years with this weekend’s Briarcliff Entertainment launch, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. At first blink, who knew the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean franchise director had taken a break (notice not practically so long as Terrence Malick’s 20 years’ relaxation between 1978’s Days of Heaven and 1998’s The Thin Red Line). That mentioned, the filmmaker had been growing different tasks since his final film, the 2016 Swiss-spa psychological horror title A Cure for Wellness, i.e. an X-Men spinoff in Gambit and the once-set-at-Netflix animated venture Cattywumpus, (which we first informed you about). However, what prompted the $3.76 billion–grossing filmmaker to helm his newest was the possibility to work off the rails, with a very gonzo authentic screenplay a couple of man from the dystopian future who lands at an L.A. diner (particularly Norms), the place he recruits disgruntled patrons to save lots of the world from the terminal risk of AI.

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The journey of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die was eight years from conception to final big-screen transformation, first hatched by The Invention of Lying co-director and scribe Matthew Robinson as a 26-page TV pilot referred to as Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30.

That idea was a scene in a classroom the place a literary main was desperately attempting to attach with college students over books. There wasn’t sufficient meat to make a sustainable TV present, so Robinson took one other crack and created a Man of the Future plotline with extra vignettes.

“We knew there was something really cool,” producer and three Arts Entertainment Partner and Robinson’s rep Oly Obst informed Deadline. A collection of read-throughs of an evolving script occurred at 3 Arts workplaces with a gaggle of writers and performers to additional develop the venture. The takeaway of that train was that Robinson’s opus would morph right into a characteristic.

“As time went on, the subject matter of AI only became more relevant and timely, and hotter and hotter,” mentioned 3 Arts Entertainment Partner and the pic’s producer Erwin Stoff (whose producing credit embrace Unbroken, the Tom Cruise film Edge of Tomorrow and serving as EP on The Matrix and I Am Legend).

“It really reached a point where Matt said, ‘Unless we make this now, the time is actually going to pass us by,’” provides Stoff.

While some filmmakers tried to make a go at Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, it wasn’t till Stoff considered Verbinski. He pitched Verbinski, and inside two days, it was a no brainer for the filmmaker, who “responded with the enthusiasm of a gladiator. There was nothing that was going to stand in his way of making this movie,” mentioned Stoff.

Verbinski had a longstanding working relationship with producer Denise Chamian, who got here aboard to provide Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, and it was then that Oscar winner Sam Rockwell’s title got here as much as star. Once he was connected, the castings flowed with Juno Temple, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz boarding. From there, Constantin bankrolled the film for round $20M web, with the pic shot in South Africa because of decrease below-the-line prices. South Africa has starred as Los Angeles earlier than within the 2006 Colin Farrell Depression-set Ask the Dust, and within the case of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, the Norms diner was re-created in Cape Town. Once Verbinski boarded the venture, it was near a three-year journey to the display.

CAA Media Finance and Gersh held screenings for patrons, and probably the most passionate to step up was Tom Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment, recognized for propelling the Donald Trump origins title The Apprentice to 2 Oscar noms. Briarcliff received the pic’s Terry Gilliam-esque sensibility, Ortenberg having labored at Columbia through the David Puttnam period, after they had the Valley-turned-London filmmaker’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Hence the advertising leaned into the hipster Gilliam stylings of yore, the one-sheet of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die an entire homage to the Monty Python alum’s animation in addition to the one-sheet for his 1986 Brazil. The multi-Clio-winning AV Squad was a giant associate on creating the marketing campaign beneath Briarcliff advertising boss David Edwards. Key artwork designers Kiera Maloney, Ben Garriga and Brain Lauzon at AV Print labored on three posters, respectively. The chief amongst them was the wired headdress of Rockwell (above), the teaser being the title remedy of a finger on a bomb set off, and the third being an ensemble (on the appropriate). Other inventive influences within the one-sheets included Mad journal and the artist Robert Williams.

The pic beneath Ortenberg’s watch promptly made its technique to Fantastic Fest in Austin, the place it made its world premiere as a shock screening. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die additionally performed LA’s PastFest and Palm Springs.

The pic’s marketing campaign leaned into the avant-garde with myriad inventive pranks and stunts, i.e. a aircraft and banner flew over Silicon Valley just lately studying “Hire Human Beings #GoodLuckHaveFunDon’tDie”.