UPDATE: Following the critical acclaim for Jason Reitman‘s SNL origins pic, Saturday Night, coming out of its Telluride release, Sony is changing up the release pattern of the ensemble pic to a platform roll-out. The movie will go exclusive on Sept 27 in LA, NYC and Toronto, then limited on Oct. 4 before breaking wide on Oct. 11.
Saturday Night will have its international premiere up here at TIFF on Tuesday, Sept. 10. The pic is already 85% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
Deadline’s Awards Editor and Chief Film Critic Pete Hammond declared that Reitman “nailed it” in casting the 80-speaking role movie with the likes of Gabriel LaBelle as SNL producer as Lorne Michaels, Dyan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Willem Dafoe as NBC exec David Tebet, Cory Michael Smith’s “spot-on Chevy Chase”; Lamorne Morris’s Garrett Morris, Matt Wood’s John Belushi and Succession‘s Nicholas Braun doing double duty as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman.
Hammond also says Saturday Night is a “a masterful movie comedy firing on all cylinders” and that it’s also “a suspense thriller too.”
“One false move and this whole ambitious soufflé could have fallen, but Reitman steers this all in style creating on the great movies about show business I have ever seen,” exclaimed Hammond.
PREVIOUS JULY 30: Jason Reitman’s Untitled SNL 1975 project has been titled Saturday Night and will be released in theaters on October 11 via Columbia Pictures.
Don’t be surprised if this movie makes it way to TIFF. Sony always has a presence at the Great White North film festival, not to mention Reitman’s Gary Hart movie The Front Runner starring Hugh Jackman at screened at Toronto in 2018 just after its world premiere at Telluride.
October 11 is the same date of the legendary NBC comedy show’s first-ever broadcast in 1975. The late-night staple will launch its 50th season this fall.
The murderer’s row ensemble cast includes Gabriel LaBelle (as Lorne Michaels), Dylan O’Brien (Dan Aykroyd), Cory Michael Smith (Chevy Chase), Rachel Sennott (Rosie Shuster), Lamorne Morris (Garrett Morris), Nicholas Braun (Jim Henson), Finn Wolfhard (NBC page), Jon Batiste (Billy Preston), Ella Hunt (Gilda Radner), Cooper Hoffman (Dick Ebersol), Andrew Barth Feldman (Neil Levy), Naomi McPherson (Janis Ian), Willem Dafoe (David Tebet), J.K. Simmons (Milton Berle) and Kaia Gerber (Jacqueline Carlin), among others.
RELATED: “People Are Going To Turn Into A**holes”: ‘SNL’ Boss Lorne Michaels On Fame, Retirement & Cost-Cutting
Directed by Reitman and written by Gil Kenan & Reitman, the film is based on a true story and follows the humor, chaos and magic of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live.
The pic is produced by Jason Blumenfeld, Peter Rice, Reitman and Kenan. EPs are Erica Mills and JoAnn Perritano.
Kenan directed and Reitman and Kenan produced and wrote Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which was released in March and made $113.3M domestic and $201.8M at the global box office.