After a decade-long absence from the big screen, visionary director Gore Verbinski has returned with the new science fiction adventure Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. With that film set to be released in January, Verbinski has already set his sights on returning to the world of animation, which he explored 14 years ago with the acclaimed Rango. He talked about his new animated project with Collider‘s Perri Nemiroff at Fantastic Fest, where Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die had its world premiere. During their conversation, Verbinski outlined the eclectic cast of his new animated feature, which will be a musical:
“Yeah, it’s called Cattywampus. It’s got Anderson Paak and HER and Glenn Close and Ice Cube. It’s just a really great cast. It’s a really fun project.
He compared it with Rango, and revealed that he’s trying to reassemble the team that animated it: “It’s different. We wanted to try to engage the same team. We’ll see if we can. I think Rango was a very specific time and place. I think it’s a tough one to repeat the circumstances of that movie, but we’ll see.”
2011’s Rango starred Johnny Depp as the voice of a pet chameleon who accidentally ends up in the frontier town of Dirt; inadvertently becoming the town’s sheriff, he gets entangled in the sinister plans of Mayor Tortoise John (Ned Beatty) and his band of outlaws. The film grossed $246 million on a $135 million budget, and holds an 88% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes; it also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
What Is ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ About?
Directed by Verbinski and written by Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters), Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die centers around a man from the future who enlists the customers of a Los Angeles diner to aid him against a malevolent artificial intelligence. It stars Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Haley Lu Richardson (The White Lotus), Michael Peña (Ant-Man), Zazie Beetz (Atlanta), Juno Temple (Ted Lasso), Dino Fetscher (Foundation), Anna Acton (Rivals), and Asim Chaudhry (Picture This). It will be released on January 30, 2026.
Making his feature debut with 1997’s Mouse Hunt, Verbinski has been at the helm of a number of blockbusters, including The Mexican, The Ring, and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films. His last film was the 2016 Dane DeHaan–Mia Goth horror thriller A Cure for Wellness.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die will be released in theaters on January 30, 2026.
via Collider