What better time than now for Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night to arrive? As the history-making Saturday Night Live prepares to enter its 50th season, the film serves as a reminder of its significant impact on television, the vast number of stars who have passed through, and the turbulent ground from which it was launched. That the show ever took off is something of a miracle.
Saturday Night 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.
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.
The starry ensemble is joined by Grammy winner Jon Batista who composed the score.
SYNOPSIS: At 11:30pm on October 11, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television – and culture – forever. Directed by Jason Reitman and written by Gil Kenan & Reitman, Saturday Night is based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. Full of humor, chaos, and the magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, we count down the minutes in real time until we hear those famous words…
Sony Pictures will release Saturday Night into theaters on October 11th.
