Saturday Night had its world premiere at the 51st Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2024, and began a limited theatrical release in the United States on September 27, 2024, before its wide release by Sony Pictures Releasing on October 11, the 49th anniversary of the show's premiere. The film received positive reviews from critics, with LaBelle's performance being singled out for praise, earning him a nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards. The film underperformed at the box office, grossing $9.8million against its $25–30 million budget.
Plot
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 view 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 the 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 initiates 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 receives 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, saying that he is quitting. As everyone looks 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 convince him to return to the show and sign his contract. Michaels is further motivated to continue with the show after having a brief chat with Henson.
Tebet arrives, demanding that the show be shut down unless Michaels shows him exactly what it entails. Andy Kaufman performs his Mighty Mouse skit, which makes everyone laugh. Michaels then tells Chase to take over Weekend Update, which he had planned to host himself. Chase does an impromptu version of Weekend Update using Zweibel's newly written material, which lands. An audience arrives and fills the venue as cast and crew finish all the sets and get into place. Tebet allows the live show to proceed to air. 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 Jason Reitman (left) and writer Gil Kenan co-wrote and co-produced the film together.
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.[6] According to Reitman, he came up with the idea for the film years earlier, but the “response was always the same: ‘That’s a great idea. But how the hell are you going to cast it?’”[7]
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.[24]
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.[24]
Reception
Box office
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.[28][29] In its second weekend, it made $270,955 from 21 theaters.[30] In its third weekend, the film expanded to 2,304 theaters and made $3.4 million, finishing in seventh.[31] Anthony D'Alessandro of Deadline Hollywood argued the film had 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).[32] The following weekend the film made $1.8 million (a drop of 47%).[33] It ended its theatrical run on Thanksgiving.[4]Variety reasoned that the film found "little box office traction" because "Sony only gave it a minuscule marketing budget."[34]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 78% of 212 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."[36]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 63 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[37] 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.[32]
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."[38]Gabriel LaBelle was singled out for praise by several outlets for his portrayal of a young Lorne Michaels, earning plaudits from Maureen Lee Lenker from Entertainment Weekly, for granting "Michaels a clarity of purpose, an unwavering conviction, and a harried sense that he's barely holding things together".[39] Gregory Ellwood from The Playlist lauded several cast members, including LaBelle for "masterfully carrying the film" and especially Dylan O'Brien for being "simply transformative" as Dan Aykroyd in "an eye-opening turn".[35]
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".[40] David Ehrlich from IndieWire stated that the film "has a lot of business in lieu of a story, and there's so much going on that it quickly starts to feel like nothing".[41]
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