Just in time for the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, Sony has dropped the first teaser for Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night. The film follows the behind-the-scenes tension in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of SNL in the fall of 1975, a debut episode that set the course of comedy history.
Reitman, who directed and co-wrote the script with Gil Kenan (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire), has described Saturday Night as a “thriller comedy”, ramping up the tension as the clock winds down to the first SNL broadcast. Everything is going wrong, the actors are assaulting one another. the crew is revolting, the writers are…well, they’re stoned. And that’s just the beginning because the network execs are just dying to pull the plug.
Set to play the iconic SNL figures are Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels, Cooper Hoffman as NBC exec Dick Ebersol, Rachel Sennott as writer Rosie Shuster, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, Matt Wood as John Belushi and Nicholas Braun pulling double-duty as Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson. Matthew Rhys, Finn Wolfhard, J. K. Simmons, Willem Dafoe, Taylor Gray, and Nicholas Podany are also in the cast.
Jon Batiste composed the score and has a role as musician Billy Preston. Expect a lot of guest stars.
Saturday Night opens in theaters on October 11th.
