'Saturday Night' Makes A Beeline For Netflix
The Jason Reitman-directed film written by Gil Kenan will arrive on the streamer two months after leaving theaters
When it comes to getting Saturday Night on Netflix, I’m gonna kill all the waities I see. Or at least get it down to two weeks. Sony Pictures’s Jason Reitman-directed biopic about the chaotic 90 minutes on October 11, 1975 that led up to the premiere of NBC’s sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live will be arriving on the streamer on January 25 in the United States.
Opening wide on October 11, 2024, the film’s box office, even just the domestic, didn’t even break $10 million and was over by Thanksgiving. The trades are putting it on insufficient marketing. A January 25 arrival means it will have taken 106 days to hit the streamer from its wide release. However, with that initial limited release on September 27, it’s exactly on par with the likes of The Garfield Movie and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire which both arrived after around 4 months or 120 days. They’re each even a little faster than the releases of 2023 by about a month, but slower than the publicly-reviled releases like Madame Web and Harold and the Purple Crayon. With Venom: The Last Dance having released 4 weeks after (by the measure of the September 27 date), it shouldn’t be that far behind in February, though a strict follow would mean it misses Valentine’s Day. January 25 is also the day Saturday Night Live itself airs its second episode of 2025, with Timothée Chalamet pulling double duty as host and musical guest, one of the few non-musical artists to achieve the feat. It is the show’s last before its primetime anniversary special on February 16.
Saturday Night was written by Gil Kenan and stars The Fabelmans’s Gabriel LaBelle as series creator (and initial co-head writer) Lorne Michaels, Tommy Dewey as other co-head writer Michael O’Donoghue, Taylor Gray and Mcabe Gregg as Al Franken and Tom Davis, Stranger Things’s Joe Chrest as Herb Sargent, Rachel Sennott as Rosie Schuster, Leander Suleiman as Anne Beatts, Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol, Paul Rust as Paul Shaffer, Josh Brener as Alan Zweibel, and Andrew Barth Feldman as talent coordinator Neil Levy. The cast portraying the major onscreen talent includes Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, Nicholas Podany as almost-onscreen but still-future cast member Billy Crystal, Jon Batiste and Naomi McPherson as original musical guests Billy Preston and Janis Ian, with Batiste composing the film’s score as well, Nicholas Braun as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman, Matthew Rhys as George Carlin, Finn Wolfhard as an NBC page, Willem Dafoe as executive David Tebet, Finn Wolfhard as an NBC page, J. K. Simmons as Milton Berle, and Kaia Gerber as Jacqueline Carlin.
Despite disappointing box office, Saturday Night is still getting recognition on the awards circuit. It’s also received two Critics Choice Awards nominations: Best Acting Ensemble against Anora, Conclave, Emilia Pérez, Sing Sing, and Wicked, and Best Comedy against Deadpool & Wolverine, My Old Ass, Hit Man, A Real Pain, and Thelma. While originally scheduled for January 12, the day you’re reading this, the ongoing and devastating wildfires have delayed the show by two weeks to January 26. Before the breakout, LaBelle got a Golden Globe nomination as Michaels for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. That resulted in defeat to Sebastian Stan for A Different Man, his fellow losers being Jesse Eisenberg for A Real Pain, Hugh Grant for Heretic, Jesse Plemons for Kinds of Kindness and Glen Powell for Hit Man.
In addition to the new SNL episode, Saturday Night’s streaming arrival is in time for Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music, a documentary exploring the show’s musical guest history airing January 27 on NBC.
Source: What’s On Netflix