While it’s a comedy institution today, Saturday Night Live was a massive gamble, and it almost never got off the ground in 1975, as detailed in the new Jason Reitman movie, Saturday Night. Set in the 90 minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live is going to debut live on NBC, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) finds his cast fighting, his crew is ready to walk and this grand experiment in televised comedy seemingly destined to fail. A massive ensemble portrays comedic legends like Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Garrett Morris and Jane Curtin featuring 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, and J. K. Simmons. Reitman co-wrote the script with Gil Kenan, who is coming off Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Saturday Night is out on October 11th, and you can check out the trailer below.
