Sony is ramping up its awards campaign plans for director Jason Reitman Saturday night live film, a dramatic reconstruction of the 90 minutes that preceded the premiere of the iconic NBC series in the mid-1970s.
The studio announced Thursday night that it will release Saturday night in select theaters on September 27 in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto, followed by another expansion on October 4. It will then be released nationwide on October 22, as originally scheduled.
The move gives Sony and the filmmakers an opportunity to use word of mouth to build anticipation for the film, which was one of the most talked-about titles at the Telluride Film Festival, considered the starting point for judging the awards landscape.
It’s the stuff of legend how showrunner Lorne Michael and a crew of incredibly talented young comedians and writers changed television (and culture) forever. Reitman directed from a script he co-wrote with Gil Kenan.
“It used to be called a 'high concept' film, back when Saturday night live was the hottest thing on television. Make a movie about the origins of that late-night comedy show, but not in a span of weeks or months, but in the 90 minutes before the first episode aired in October 1975. We follow the stresses of the show's creators and watch the stars rehearse their sketches while the musicians rehearse and the NBC executives fret,” Stephen Farber writes in his review for THR.
A teaser trailer for the film highlights the chaos that ensued over the last 90 minutes before the start of that first-ever episode. This includes a tense exchange between series creator Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle) and NBC executive Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman).
Ebersol says in the film: “Lorne, 90 minutes of live television from a bunch of 20-year-olds who've never done anything? Did you ever stop to ask yourself why they said yes? [to] a counterculture show starring totally unknown people, with no narrative and even less structure? They want you to fail.”
This prompts Lorne to respond, “We just have to get it on the air.”
Reitman and Gil Kenan wrote the screenplay for Saturday Night based on their interviews with the cast, writers and crew live on the show's launch, which is currently entering its 50th season. Reitman, Kenan, Jason Blumenfeld and Peter Rice are producing the film, formerly known by the working title SNL 1975The executive producers are Erica Mills and JoAnn Perritano.
To portray SNL'The inaugural players are Dylan O'Brien (as Dan Aykroyd), Lamorne Morris (Garrett Morris), Cory Michael Smith (Chevy Chase), Matt Wood (John Belushi), Ella Hunt (Gilda Radner), Emily Fairn (Laraine Newman) and Kim Matula (Jane Curtin).
Additional cast members include Willem Dafoe (David Tebet), Nicholas Braun (Jim Henson), Matthew Rhys (George Carlin), Kaia Gerber (Jacqueline Carlin), JK Simmons (Milton Berle), Jon Batiste (Billy Preston), Andrew Barth Feldman (Neil Levy), Naomi McPherson (Janis Ian) and Finn Wolfhard as NBC's page.