Jason Reitman will bring audiences Saturday Night, which depicts the chaotic premiere of the first Saturday Night Live episode.
Although Saturday Night Live is the institution that it is now and remains divisive with audiences, Jason Reitman will be bringing the story of the original plucky cast of SNL from 1975 as he directed and co-wrote a screenplay with Gil Keenan of the now-titled Saturday Night. Saturday Night will explore the evening of October 11, 1975, when “a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television forever. Saturday Night is the true story of what happened behind the scenes that night in the moments leading up to the first broadcast of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. It depicts the chaos and magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, counting down the minutes in real-time to the infamous words, ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!’”
Deadline has reported that the project, formally known as just SNL 1975, has taken on Saturday Night as its official title and Columbia Pictures has now scheduled a release date for the film. The movie will be hitting screens on October 11, which will be nearly 50 years after that first banner pilot episode premiered on TV tube screens on NBC.
The new not-ready-for-primetime-players include Gabriel LaBelle (as Lorne Michaels), Dylan O’Brien (Dan Aykroyd), Cory Michael Smith (Chevy Chase), Rachel Sennott (Rosie Shuster), Lamorne Morris (Garrett Morris), Nicholas Braun (Jim Henson), Finn Wolfhard (NBC page), Jon Batiste (Billy Preston), Ella Hunt (Gilda Radner), Cooper Hoffman (Dick Ebersol), Andrew Barth Feldman (Neil Levy), Naomi McPherson (Janis Ian), Willem Dafoe (David Tebet), J.K. Simmons (Milton Berle) and Kaia Gerber (Jacqueline Carlin)
Reitman and Kenan’s script takes inspiration from interviews they recorded with living members of the SNL cast, writers, and crew. Anyone who knows anything about Saturday Night Live knows how chaotic and unpredictable the show can be, including breaks in character, last-minute script changes, inexperienced guests, and technical snafus.
Reitman and Kenan had also teamed up with original cast member Dan Aykroyd for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which was one of the bigger hits of this year as it pulled in $113.3 million domestic and $201.8 million at the global box office after its release in March.
Reitman, Kenan, Jason Blumenfeld, Erica Mills, and Peter Rice are producing.