Jason Reitman Is Making A 'Saturday Night Live' Origin Movie At Sony

The announced cast is packed and extensive

January 31, 2024 was my 30th birthday. While a lot of people have January 31 birthdays, that includes two Saturday Night Live cast members. They are current second-year Michael Longfellow, who it turns out was born the exact day I was and thus also turned 30, and the beloved Bobby Moynihan, who was on the show from 2008 to 2017 and turned 47. As the beloved sketch comedy series barrels toward its 50th anniversary, it was reported in May that Jason Reitman is set to direct a film of the show’s beginnings at Sony Pictures.

The film will be set on October 11, 1975, the show’s premiere night, where its ravenous group of young comedians and writers would end up changing television forever, telling the true and chaotic behind-the-scenes story of everything that happened that night. Reitman teams again with his Ghostbusters: Afterlife co-writer (and Frozen Empire director) Gil Kenan for a script based on an extensive series of interviews they conducted with all surviving cast, writers, and crew. It is also part of their overall production deal with the studio. They produce with Jason Blumenfeld, Erica Mills and Peter Rice.

There are a lot of familiar faces involved with the story, and it’s only been two and a half months since the actors got their deal, with a holiday break along the way, casting is pouring out. The first castings for SNL 1975 covered behind-the-scenes people, with The Fabelmans star Gabriel LaBelle cast as creator Lorne Michaels, Cooper Hoffman as well-regarded executive Dick Ebersol, who was at the time NBC’s Vice President of Late Night Programming, and Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster, one of the show’s writers and Michaels’s then-wife. While this is LaBelle’s first major studio role since his breakout Hoffman comes from starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Licorice Pizza. He since co-starred in Ethan Hawke’s Wildcat and has Old Guy alongside Christoph Waltz coming up but is currently awaiting a date. Sennott co-produced and co-wrote Bottoms with Emma Seligman, and starred in it with Ayo Edebiri. She’s also seen in A24’s Bodies Bodies Bodies.

A week later, the Not Ready for Prime Time women were found: Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin. Hunt is best known for her role in the Apple TV+ series Dickinson but has also been seen in films such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, with Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell, and Master from Amazon. She next will be seen in at least one of the four parts of Kevin Costner’s Western Horizon: An American Saga, which he has co-written, produced, and directed. Fairn most recently starred opposite Martin Freeman in BBC One’s The Responder and will star opposite Julianne Moore in AMC’s Mary and George. Matula starred in the single-season 2018 Fox comedy LA To Vegas, and appeared in Lifetime‘s UnReal and MGM’s 2019 film Fighting with My Family with Florence Pugh, Vince Vaughn, Nick Frost and Dwayne Johnson, about WWE wrestler Paige.

And then on Tuesday came the men, with The Maze Runner and Bumblebee’s Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, original Broadway Patrick and Mr. Krabs understudy Matt Wood as John Belushi, and New Girl, Woke, and Fargo favorite Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris (who is getting his star on the Walk of Fame Thursday). Morris as Morris is perfect casting. Smith is best known as Gotham’s Riddler and has worked with director Alexander Payne in Carol (as private investigator Tommy Tucker) and Wonderstruck, and May December.

Source: Deadline (1, 2, 3)