‘Saturday Night’ Movie Trailer Captures The Turbulence Of How ‘SNL’ Began, Features An Epic Ensemble Cast

It’s quite a tall order to make a movie about the origins of Saturday Night Live, but if the initial trailer is a sign of what the cast and crew of Saturday Night did during production, they just might have pulled it off in spades.

Between several actors who are the spitting image of their real-life likenesses to the high-stakes, high-energy chaos of the atmosphere to the frenetic yet controlled and dynamic camerawork, Saturday Night looks like an absolute roller-coaster ride that I have a feeling audiences will want to be all aboard for.

A good chunk of the trailer focuses on dialogue between SNL creator Lorne Michaels and co-show developer Dick Ebersol, as there’s a mad rush and scramble just to get this fledgling, revolutionary sketch comedy show to air in one piece.

While it’s hard to have full context of everything that’s happening in the fast-paced teaser, Saturday Night‘s debut poster gives us some clues as to what’s going on behind the scenes.

Jason Reitman has written and directed bangers such as Thank You For Smoking and Up In The Air. He was also in the director’s chair for Juno, which was nominated for several Oscars. It’s been a while since Reitman had a huge hit, having had a hand in the last couple Ghostbusters movies. Saturday Night looks like it has the makings of some Hollywood magic, with a stellar cast to bring the extraordinary, generational story to life.

Michaels is played by Gabriel LaBelle, who anchored Steven Spielberg’s more or less autobiographical film The Fablemans. Those are a decent couple credits in the ol’ filmography at age 21. Then we have Licorice Pizza star Cooper Hoffman — son of the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman — as Ebersol.

Other standouts from the trailer who I caught include Cory Michael Smith looking convincing as Chevy Chase, Matthew Rhys dropping a series of F-bombs as George Carlin, and Nicholas Braun of Succession fame. Come to find out Braun is playing oddball comedian Andy Kaufman and Muppets creator Jim Henson? That’s daring to say the least. Can’t wait to see how he pulls that off.

I don’t think I realized how soon Saturday Night was coming out. October 11?? Wild that we haven’t seen a trailer of any kind until only about two months out. Premiering one week after Joker: Folie à Deux is a bold choice, but otherwise, I’d say the outlook for Saturday Night is better than most people likely anticipated.