Saturday Night: All About the Movie Inspired bySaturday Night Live's First Ever Show in 1975

Mar. 15, 2025

Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), and John Belushi (Matt Wood) in the Makeup Room in SATURDAY NIGHT.Photo:Hopper Stone

Hopper Stone

Ahead of its 50th anniversary, the first-ever show ofSaturday Night Liveis being spotlighted in a special way.

Saturday Nightwill focus onSNLcreator Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) and the famous cast he worked with: Dylan O’Brien asDan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith asChevy Chaseand Lamorne Morris asGarrett Morris.

“Saturday Nightis based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast ofSaturday Night Live,” the synopsis reads. “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….”

From what the real original cast has said about those playing them to when it will be released in theaters, here’s everything to know aboutSaturday Night.

When willSaturday Nightbe released?

Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), John Belushi (Matt Wood) and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) in SATURDAY NIGHT.Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures

What isSaturday Nightabout?

A still from ‘Saturday Night’.Sony Pictures

The film follows the cast and crew behind the pilot episode ofSNLfrom Michaels, who is desperately trying to get his creation on air, to Dick Ebersol, who was NBC’s vice president of late-night programming at the time.

The entire movie takes place in the hour and a half before the show goes live at 11:30 p.m. and a seemingly unsurmountable amount of chaos ensues from the drama between the crewmates to the naysayers in charge.

Despite it all, Michaels is determined to get his crew of 20-somethings on air, believing that if they just make it to the live show, all will turn out okay.

Who is in the cast ofSaturday Night?

Gabriel LaBelle attends the 95th Annual Academy Awards on March 12, 2023 ; Dylan O’Brien attends Premiere Of Paramount Pictures' “Bumblebee” at TCL Chinese Theatre on December 09, 2018 ; Lamorne Morris attends the 2018 Creative Arts Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 8, 2018.Mike Coppola/Getty, Presley Ann/Getty, Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty

Mike Coppola/Getty, Presley Ann/Getty, Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty

Saturday Nightfeatures a stacked cast, including LaBelle, Smith, Morris and O’Brien. The main cast features Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, and Matt Wood as John Belushi.

In addition to theSNLcast, the movie includes some big names such as Nicholas Podany asBilly Crystal, Nicholas Braun asJim Henson,Kaia Gerberas Jacqueline Carlin, Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster, the latePhilip Seymour Hoffman’s sonCooper Hoffmanas Dick Ebersol, Jon Batiste as musician Billy Preston,Willem Dafoeas David Tebet and J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle.

Stranger Things’Finn Wolfhardwill also make an appearance in the movie as an unnamed NBC page and Andrew Barth Feldman, Tommy Dewey and Matthew Rhys are also set to star in the film.

What have the originalSaturday Night Livecast members said about the project?

Neilson Barnard/Getty, Lester Cohen/WireImage, Leon Bennett/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty

After the casting was announced, a number of the originalSNLmembers who will be portrayed in the film shared their thoughts on who was chosen to play them.

“We’ll see, You know what,I’m just glad the young actor got work,” Aykroyd joked toEntertainment Tonightin March 2024 of O’Brien. “If he’s compelled to play me, well, I’m glad he got work.”

Meanwhile, Garrett told PEOPLE the same month that he shared some advice with Lamorne before he began playing him, calling the actor “wonderful.”

“We talked about it. He has to be a guy who’s dealing with some young people,” Garrett said. “When I was inside in that life, I was 39 years old, and the rest [of the cast], they had just come out of high school and college.”

“The Black thing is you take longer to do what the younger White people do, and you usually have to do it two or three times as good,” he continued. “We talked about that, and he already told me he’s going to play it like that — an older Black guy who’s dealing with these younger guys. I said, ‘Wow, man.’ "

Garrett wasn’t the only one handing out advice. Though Wolfhard plays a page — one of the entry-level positions at NBC — he told PEOPLE in March 2024 that he still sought advice from Aykroyd, whom he shared a screen with inGhostbusters: Frozen City.

“He told me storiesjust about how none of them were famous yet, and there was a time where they were all normal people that were in the world and trying to make a living as being comedians and just hearing about just how Dan lived as a guy beforeSNLand his daily life, it was really incredible and very insightful,” Wolfhard said.

Is there a trailer forSaturday Night?

Thetrailer forSaturday Nightwas released in August 2024, giving a sneak peek of the drama set to ensue in the movie. In one moment, Hoffman’s Ebersol doubts Michaels’ ability to get the show on air, telling him the network expects him to fail.

Michaels determinedly responds, “We just have to make it to air.”

The rest of the trailer shows fights between the crew and the cast, a cocky Chevy Chase and a not-so-stable set.

Who is directingSaturday Night?

Film director Jason Reitman attends the GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE World Premiere on November 15, 2021 in New York City.Theo Wargo/Getty

Theo Wargo/Getty

Reitman will be helming the movie as a director. His father, Ivan Reitman, worked on a number of projects with various originalSNLalumni, so he had a personal connection to the idea — and the pressure to get it right.

“We interviewed everyone we could find that was alive from opening night,” Reitman toldVanity Fairin August 2024. “Every living cast member, every living writer, people from the art department, costumes, hair and makeup, NBC pages, members of Billy Preston’s band — I mean, anyone we could find.”

source: people.com