'Saturday Night' trailer: Watch Lorne Michaels try to get SNL off the ground

Live from New York, it's... total chaos!
 By 
Belen Edwards
 on 
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The first cast of SNL onstage.
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This year, Saturday Night Live celebrates its 50th season on the air. But before NBC's live sketch show was an American television institution, it was an unsure bet plagued by fighting cast members, onset catastrophes, and Muppet assault. At least, that's what we see in the trailer for the upcoming film Saturday Night.

Directed by Jason Reitman (Juno, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), Saturday Night takes us behind the scenes of the chaos leading up to SNL's first-ever taping in 1975. In the movie's first trailer, we follow creator Lorne Michaels (The Fabelmans' Gabriel LaBelle) as he attempts to launch the 90-minute live comedy show, all while network executives warn him he's headed for certain failure.

The trailer also introduces us to Saturday Night's version of SNL's original cast members, including Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien), all relative unknowns at the time SNL began.

Rounding out Saturday Night's star-studded cast are Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholar Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Tommy Dewey, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, and J.K. Simmons.

Saturday Night hits theaters Oct. 11.

Topics Film

A woman in a white sweater with shoulder-length brown hair.
Belen Edwards
Entertainment Reporter

Belen Edwards is an Entertainment Reporter at Mashable. She covers movies and TV with a focus on fantasy and science fiction, adaptations, animation, and more nerdy goodness. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Television Critics Association, as well as a Tomatometer-approved critic.


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