Ghostbusters Afterlife Director Jason Reitman Doing Biopic Film About Saturday Night Live’s First Broadcast

Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason Reitman is set to helm a new biopic film about Saturday Night Live‘s first broadcast, which is in development at Sony Pictures. The film will look behind the scenes at what it took to get Saturday Night Live off the ground and pull off its first live broadcast. The film is still untitled, but Reitman will also write the script with his Ghostbusters: Afterlife co-writer Gil Kenan (Monster House, Poltergeist). Reitman’s longtime producing partners Jason Blumenfeld (Up in the Air, Young Adult, Tully) and Erica Mills (Tully, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) are also onboard as producers for this SNL biopic. 

According to Deadline’s report: 

The film will be set on October 11, 1975, where a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television forever. This is the true story of what happened that night behind the scenes in the moments leading up to the first SNL broadcast, retelling chaos and magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, counting down the minutes in real time to the infamous words, “Live From New York, it’s Saturday Night.”

The story for the film was reportedly mined from actual interviews that both Reitman and Kenan conducted with the surviving cast, writers, and crew members who were actually around for Saturday Night Live’s debut broadcast. That first cast included names of what are now comedic icons, including: 

• Dan Aykroyd
• John Belushi
• Chevy Chase
• George Coe
• Jane Curtin
• Garrett Morris
• Laraine Newman
• Michael O’Donoghue
• Gilda Radner

Of the original cast members, Aykroyd, Chase, Curtin Morris, and Newman are still living (not that it matters for the film). The original writing staff for SNL included Lorne Michaels and Michael o’Donoghue as the head writers, with a staff that included Anne Beatts, Chase, Tom Davis, Al Franken, Marilyn Suzanne Miller, Herb Sargent, Tom Schiller, Rosie Shuster and Alan Zweibel.

George Carlin served as the host (doing three stand-up monologues), with Billy Preston and Janis Ian as musical acts. Law & Order icon Richard Belzer was the warm-up comedy act for the show, and Paul Simon appeared at the end to announce himself as host for the second show of the series. 

The cold opening featured John Belushi as a man learning English. The sketches were shorter (two minutes) and included the following premises: “the Bees; “Trojan Horse Home Security”; “Triple-Trac”; and The Land of Gorch, with Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Rhonda Hansome, and Alice Tweedy. Andy Kaufman appears in a sketch about Mighty Mouse. Other sketch cameos included Valri Bromfield, Belzer, and Tom Davis

While Reitman is clearly locking in for this Saturday Night Live biopic film, Gil Kenan is actually stepping into the director’s chair for the Ghostbusters: Afterlife sequel, which Reitman co-wrote. The two of them have struck a producing deal with Sony Pictures, and it looks like they are certainly heading up some big projects for the studio, to earn that pay. 

This Saturday Night Live biopic is in the works at Sony Pictures.