Saturday Night (2024 film)

Saturday Night
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jason Reitman
Written by	Gil Kenan Jason Reitman
Produced by	Jason Blumenfeld Peter Rice Jason Reitman Gil Kenan
Starring	Gabriel LaBelle Rachel Sennott Cory Michael Smith Ella Hunt Dylan O'Brien Emily Fairn Matt Wood Lamorne Morris Kim Matula Finn Wolfhard Nicholas Braun Cooper Hoffman Andrew Barth Feldman Kaia Gerber Tommy Dewey Willem Dafoe Matthew Rhys J. K. Simmons
Cinematography	Eric Steelberg
Edited by	Nathan Orloff Shane Reid
Music by	Jon Batiste
Production companies	Columbia Pictures Reitman/Kenan Productions
Distributed by	Sony Pictures Releasing
Release dates	August 31, 2024 (2024-08-31) (Telluride) September 27, 2024 (2024-09-27) (United States)
Running time	109 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$25–30 million[2][3]
Box office	$9.5 million[4][5]

Saturday Night is a 2024 American biographical comedy-drama film, directed by Jason Reitman, about the night of the 1975 premiere of NBC's Saturday Night, later known as Saturday Night Live. The film stars an ensemble cast portraying the various Saturday Night cast and crew, led by Gabriel LaBelle as the show's creator and producer Lorne Michaels.

Saturday Night had its world premiere at the 51st Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2024, and had a limited theatrical release in the United States on September 27, 2024, before its wide release by Sony Pictures Releasing on October 11, on the 49th anniversary of the show's premiere, during the show's 50th season. The film received positive reviews from critics but grossed $9 million on a $25–30 million budget, becoming a box-office bomb.

On October 11, 1975, Lorne Michaels arrives at the NBC building to prepare for the airing of the first episode of NBC's Saturday Night. The evening is fraught with accidents and dysfunctional cast and crew. Michaels's boss, Dick Ebersol warns him that David Tebet has brought executives from across the country to come and see the broadcast. Despite Tebet giving encouraging words to Michaels, Ebersol makes it known that Tebet has no faith in the show and is ready to replay a taping of an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to fill in for time.

Garrett Morris, who has a background in operatic theater, ponders his place among a cast of comedic performers; John Belushi remains detached from everyone and constantly picks fights; Jim Henson complains over how he is being treated by the writers; the writers are at war with censor Joan Carbunkle and her demands; host George Carlin thinks the whole show is a sham; and everyone is trying to figure out what exactly the show is about. Chevy Chase confronts Milton Berle when he begins to hit on his girlfriend Jacqueline and gets told off and warned that he will become nothing. Michaels gets a call from Johnny Carson himself who gives a very unsupportive warning.

Despite Michaels warning him not to, Ebersol attempts to sell the idea of performing a sketch with a Polaroid camera for product placement purposes. Belushi becomes enraged and storms off the set, claiming that he quits. As everyone tries to look for him, assistant Neil Levy is given a joint by Paul Shaffer and panics, locking himself in a closet. He is eventually coaxed out by the cast. Michaels goes to a bar to relax where he comes across comedy writer Alan Zweibel and hires him on the spot to become a writer on the show. He, along with Gilda Radner, later find Belushi ice skating and slowly convinces him to come back to the show and sign his contract. Michaels is further motivated to continue with the show after having a brief chat with Henson.

The cast, crew, and everyone gets into place until Tebet arrives demanding that the show be shut down unless Michaels shows him exactly what the show entails. Andy Kaufman performs his Mighty Mouse skit, followed by Chase doing an impromptu version of Weekend Update using Zweibel's newly written material. An audience finally arrives and fills the venue as cast and crew finish all the sets and get into place. Michael O'Donoghue and Belushi perform the Wolverine sketch, which is well received by the audience. Chase enters the scene and announces, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"

Director/co-writer/co-producer Jason Reitman (left) and co-writer/co-producer Gil Kenan.

It was announced in May 2023 that Jason Reitman would be directing, co-writing, and producing a film about the creation of the series Saturday Night Live for Sony Pictures. He, alongside his Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) collaborator Gil Kenan, conducted interviews with the living cast and crew of the premiere season in order to better develop the screenplay, According to Reitman, he worked on the film for two decades while promoting Juno.^[6]

In January 2024, Gabriel LaBelle was cast to portray Lorne Michaels, in his second major leading role following his performance as Sammy Fabelman in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2022), with Cooper Hoffman, Rachel Sennott, Ella Hunt, Emily Fairn, Kim Matula, Lamorne Morris, Dylan O'Brien, Cory Michael Smith, and Matt Wood cast as Dick Ebersol, Rosie Shuster, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, and John Belushi respectively.^[7][8][9] Nicholas Braun, Tommy Dewey, and Nicholas Podany were added in March to portray Jim Henson, Michael O'Donoghue, and Billy Crystal respectively.^[10] Additionally, Braun ended up cast to play Andy Kaufman as well. That role was originally supposed to be portrayed by Benny Safdie, but he had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts.^[11] Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Finn Wolfhard, J. K. Simmons, Billy Bryk, Joe Chrest, Taylor Gray, Mcabe Gregg, and Willem Dafoe joined the cast later that month.^[12][13][14] Jon Batiste, who was hired to compose the score for the film, also appeared as Billy Preston.^[15] In April, Naomi McPherson of the band Muna was cast to portray Janis Ian.^[16] In June, it was reported that Leander Suleiman had been cast as writer Anne Beatts.^[17]

Principal photography began in March 2024 in Atlanta and Fayetteville, Georgia, as locations, under the working title Wolverines, a reference to the very first sketch ever performed on the series.^[18][19][20] Scenes were shot outside of Rockefeller Plaza on the weekend of March 9–10.^[21] Filming had concluded by May.^[22]

On July 30, it was announced the title was changed from the working title of SNL 1975 to Saturday Night, which was the original title of the show during its first season, since there was already a competing show at the time on ABC called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. It was also given the release date of October 11, 2024, 49 years to the day that SNL premiered on NBC.^[23]

The film premiered at the 51st Telluride Film Festival and was selected to screen at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.^[24][25][26]

Shortly after its Telluride premiere, Sony Pictures decided to make some changes to the film's release schedule, pivoting to a limited theatrical release starting in Los Angeles, New York City, and Toronto on September 27, 2024, expanding to more cities on October 4, and then a nationwide release on October 11.^[23]

In the United States, the film made $270,487 from five theaters in its opening weekend; its per-screen average of $54,097 was the second-best limited opening of the year, behind Kinds of Kindness.^[27][28] In its second weekend, it made $270,955 from 21 theaters.^[29] In its third weekend, the film expanded to 2,304 theaters and made $3.4 million, finishing in seventh.^[30] Anthony D'Alessandro of Deadline Hollywood argued that the film failed to find an audience despite positive reviews, similar to Sony's Dumb Money (which made $3.3 million when it expanded wide in 2023).^[31] The following weekend the film made $1.8 million (a drop of 47%), finishing in ninth.^[32]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 77% of 186 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Jazzed up by an excellent ensemble that captures the essence if not exact likeness of SNL's original cast and crew, Saturday Night is a frenetic and nostalgic celebration of one of showbiz's most auspicious debuts."^[33] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 63 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[34] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it an 82% overall positive score, with 63% saying they would definitely recommend it.^[31]

Peter Debruge of Variety gave the film a positive review, stating that director Reitman "finds the right ensemble to capture the lunacy from which SNL was born" and calling the film "a rowdy, delectably profane backstage homage."^[35]

Conversely, Benjamin Lee of The Guardian gave the film one out of five stars, calling the film an "unfunny misfire" and a "dull and self-indulgent mess".^[36]

• Official website
• Saturday Night at IMDb