Saturday Night: All About the Movie Inspired by Saturday Night Live's First Ever Show in 1975

Ahead of its 50th anniversary, the first-ever show of Saturday Night Live is being spotlighted in a special way.

From director Jason Reitman, Saturday Night tells the story of the 90 minutes before SNL went live for the first time on Oct. 11, 1975. Written by Reitman and Gil Kenan, the movie is based on interviews conducted with the cast members, writers and producers of one of the most famous pilots in TV history.

Saturday Night will focus on SNL creator Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) and the famous cast he worked with: Dylan O'Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase and Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris.

"Saturday Night is based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live,” the synopsis reads. “Full of humor, chaos and the magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, we count down the minutes in real time until we hear those famous words…."

From what the real original cast has said about those playing them to when it will be released in theaters, here’s everything to know about Saturday Night.

When will Saturday Night be released?

Saturday Night will be released in theaters on Oct. 11, 2024 — exactly 49 years after the events in the movie take place. The regular season of Saturday Night Live will return to late-night TV in September 2024, but the show is also planning a three-hour special on Feb. 16, 2025, to honor its 50th anniversary.

What is Saturday Night about?

The film follows the cast and crew behind the pilot episode of SNL from Michaels, who is desperately trying to get his creation on air, to Dick Ebersol, who was NBC’s vice president of late-night programming at the time.

The entire movie takes place in the hour and a half before the show goes live at 11:30 p.m. and a seemingly unsurmountable amount of chaos ensues from the drama between the crewmates to the naysayers in charge.

Despite it all, Michaels is determined to get his crew of 20-somethings on air, believing that if they just make it to the live show, all will turn out okay.

Who is in the cast of Saturday Night?

Saturday Night features a stacked cast, including LaBelle, Smith, Morris and O’Brien. The main cast features Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, and Matt Wood as John Belushi.

In addition to the SNL cast, the movie includes some big names such as Nicholas Podany as Billy Crystal, Nicholas Braun as Jim Henson, Kaia Gerber as Jacqueline Carlin, Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol, Jon Batiste as musician Billy Preston, Willem Dafoe as David Tebet and J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle. 

Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard will also make an appearance in the movie as an unnamed NBC page and Andrew Barth Feldman, Tommy Dewey and Matthew Rhys are also set to star in the film.

What have the original Saturday Night Live cast members said about the project?

After the casting was announced, a number of the original SNL members who will be portrayed in the film shared their thoughts on who was chosen to play them.

“We’ll see, You know what, I’m just glad the young actor got work,” Aykroyd joked to Entertainment Tonight in March 2024 of O'Brien. “If he’s compelled to play me, well, I’m glad he got work.”

Meanwhile, Garrett told PEOPLE the same month that he shared some advice with Lamorne before he began playing him, calling the actor “wonderful.”

"We talked about it. He has to be a guy who's dealing with some young people," Garrett said. "When I was inside in that life, I was 39 years old, and the rest [of the cast], they had just come out of high school and college."

"The Black thing is you take longer to do what the younger White people do, and you usually have to do it two or three times as good," he continued. "We talked about that, and he already told me he's going to play it like that — an older Black guy who's dealing with these younger guys. I said, 'Wow, man.' "

Garrett wasn’t the only one handing out advice. Though Wolfhard plays a page — one of the entry-level positions at NBC — he told PEOPLE in March 2024 that he still sought advice from Aykroyd, whom he shared a screen with in Ghostbusters: Frozen City.

"He told me stories just about how none of them were famous yet, and there was a time where they were all normal people that were in the world and trying to make a living as being comedians and just hearing about just how Dan lived as a guy before SNL and his daily life, it was really incredible and very insightful,” Wolfhard said.

Is there a trailer for Saturday Night?

The trailer for Saturday Night was released in August 2024, giving a sneak peek of the drama set to ensue in the movie. In one moment, Hoffman’s Ebersol doubts Michaels’ ability to get the show on air, telling him the network expects him to fail.

“I mean, you’re 90 minutes of live television by a group of 20-year-olds who’ve never made anything,” he tells Michaels in one snippet. “Do you ever stop and wonder why they said yes? A counterculture show starring total unknowns with zero narrative and even less structure? They want you to fail.”

Michaels determinedly responds, “We just have to make it to air.”

The rest of the trailer shows fights between the crew and the cast, a cocky Chevy Chase and a not-so-stable set.

Who is directing Saturday Night? 

Reitman will be helming the movie as a director. His father, Ivan Reitman, worked on a number of projects with various original SNL alumni, so he had a personal connection to the idea — and the pressure to get it right.

“We interviewed everyone we could find that was alive from opening night,” Reitman told Vanity Fair in August 2024. “Every living cast member, every living writer, people from the art department, costumes, hair and makeup, NBC pages, members of Billy Preston’s band — I mean, anyone we could find.”