Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gore Verbinski
Written by	Matthew Robinson
Produced by	Gore Verbinski Robert Kulzer Erwin Stoff Oly Obst Denise Chamian
Starring	Sam Rockwell Haley Lu Richardson Michael Peña Zazie Beetz Asim Chaudhry Juno Temple
Cinematography	James Whitaker
Edited by	Craig Wood
Music by	Geoff Zanelli
Production companies	Constantin Film Blind Wink Productions 3 Arts Entertainment
Distributed by	Briarcliff Entertainment (United States) Constantin Film (Germany)
Release dates	September 24, 2025 (2025-09-24) (Fantastic Fest) February 13, 2026 (2026-02-13) (United States)
Running time	134 minutes[1]
Countries	United States Germany[2]
Language	English
Budget	$20 million[3]
Box office	$9 million[4][5]

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is a 2025 science fiction comedy film directed by Gore Verbinski and written by Matthew Robinson. The film stars Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, and Juno Temple. It follows a man from the future who travels to the past to recruit patrons of a Los Angeles diner to help combat a rogue artificial intelligence.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die premiered at the 2025 Fantastic Fest and was released in the United States on February 13, 2026, by Briarcliff Entertainment. The film received positive reviews from critics and has grossed $9 million worldwide against a budget of $20 million.

A man from the future arrives at a Norms diner in Los Angeles at 10:10 PM, announcing that he is there to save the world and needs volunteers to join him. He believes a specific combination of diner patrons will help him succeed but, as he does not know which combination is correct, this is his 117th attempt: the others failed. His knowledge of patrons convinces some that he is telling the truth. The man coerces Scott, Bob, Marie, and couple Mark and Janet, to join. Susan and Ingrid volunteer, and the man initially rejects Ingrid but changes his mind. Police surround the diner and Bob is killed, while the rest of the group escape when Susan directs them to a tunnel.

In flashback, some of the group's backstories are revealed. Mark and Janet are teachers whose students are obsessed with their phones. When Mark touches one of his student's phones, all the students react by following him threateningly. Mark and Janet take a pair of homemade electronic guns, made by their colleague to temporarily disable cellphones, to escape. Susan is a single mother whose son, Darren, was killed in a school shooting. Susan learns of a company that can "bring back" dead children by cloning, but she is distressed by the unnatural behavior of the cloned Darren. Susan is secretly given an alternate AI that can revive the dead virtually, and this AI Darren tells her to "follow the man". Ingrid has an allergy to electronic devices and Wi-Fi, and lost her partner Tim when he became obsessed with a virtual reality he claimed was better than the real world.

The man from the future tells the group that they have to find a nine-year-old boy who is about to create an AI that will take over the world. The man does not want to stop the process, but merely introduce a security protocol that will secure the AI. The man tells them that in the bad future, people will become so obsessed with the virtual reality that real world resources will run out, leading to mass deaths. The man was raised in a bunker by his mother in a sunless post-apocalyptic world, and he blames himself for her death, as it was because of him finding and using a VR device that a drone killed her.

The group are chased by a pair of masked men who try to kill them, and both Marie and one of the masked men are killed. The group eventually reach the house next to their target, and the man warns them that they will be attacked, but it is never the same thing each time. The house is surrounded by teenagers on their phones who break into the house. Mark and Janet, using their cellphone-disabling guns, sacrifice themselves to lure some of the teenagers away, allowing the rest of the group to make it to the target house. However, before they can reach the house, the man, Susan, and Ingrid are confronted at gunpoint by Doug, the surviving of the two masked men from earlier, seeking vengeance for the death of his partner, Karl. The man manages to try and talk Doug out of killing them, but Doug is suddenly struck and killed by a car that has been commandeered by Scott. The group enter the house and are attacked by the couple posing as the child's parents, and Scott is fatally stabbed in the head; in response, the man shoots and kills the false father.

The man, Susan, and Ingrid find the boy. Susan recognizes the boy as a clone, who is being directed by his programming to create the AI singularity. They attempt to plug in the protocol but are attacked by the AI, and the man is stabbed. Ingrid is about to plug in the protocol when she receives a vision from the AI about the future it's trying to make a reality. It tells Ingrid that the man is her son, and that he will have a better life if she embraces this new future. Ingrid rejects the AI and plugs in the protocol, forcing the AI to reboot. The survivors, including Mark and Janet, celebrate their success in the morning light. Ingrid comforts the man, but the man realizes something is off and goes back in time. Ingrid realizes that the AI gave them a fake happy ending to keep them compliant.

The man returns to the beginning of the night, in the diner. He sits down with Ingrid and tells her they went about it the wrong way, and the solution is to give everyone in the world the same allergy that Ingrid has.

Screenwriter Matthew Robinson had initially written a script for a television pilot titled Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30 centered on a literary major and his attempts to connect with other students over books.^[3] After determining there wasn't enough material to the concept to sustain an ongoing television series, Robinson instead shifted the focus to a man from the future and added more vignettes. The script went through a series of development sessions at 3 Arts Entertainment until it eventually morphed into a feature film project.^[3] Ongoing developments in artificial intelligence led to the producers attempting to jumpstart the film as it was felt the project would lose cultural relevance if they moved too late.^[3]

It was announced in February 2024 that Gore Verbinski was set to direct the film, with Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz and Juno Temple cast to star.^[7]

Producer Erwin Stoff pitched the project to Verbinski after several other candidates ended up not working out and according to Stoff responded with fervent enthusiasm which helped the project take off.^[3] Following Verbinski's frequent collaborator, producer Denise Chamian, joining the project, they were able to secure the cast beginning with Rockwell which in turn led to Constantin Film bankrolling the film's entire $20 million budget.^[3]

Principal photography began in April 2024 in Cape Town.^[8]

In September 2025, it was announced that Geoff Zanelli would compose the film's score. After providing additional music for Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean films and The Lone Ranger (2013), this is the first film Verbinski has directed with Zanelli as the primary composer.^[9]

The film had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 28, 2025, followed by a Q&A session with Verbinski, and was released in the United States by Briarcliff Entertainment on February 13, 2026.^[10][11]

It had its European premiere as a Special Gala screening at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in February 2026.^[12][13]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of 206 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "A gleeful high-concept comedy with a serious message at its core, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die lets Sam Rockwell rip with thrilling results while marking a very welcome return of director Gore Verbinski to peak form."^[14] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[15] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Peter Debruge of Variety called the film "an unapologetically irreverent, wildly inventive, end-is-nigh take on the time-loop movie," and stated that "It takes a virtuoso of [Verbinski's] caliber to execute on the movie’s intricate Everything Everywhere All at Once-level imagination, even if the gonzo idea man here is actually [screenwriter] Robinson."^[6]

• Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die at IMDb