Saturday Night Live will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, which will also mark the 49th anniversary of the first person to complain that the show isn’t as funny as it used to be. Jason Reitman is set to helm a Saturday Night Live movie about the broadcast of the very first show, and Deadline reports that the project has found its Lorne Michaels.
Gabriel LaBelle, who broke out as the star of Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, is set to play Lorne Michaels in the Saturday Night Live movie. With the exception of a five-year period in the 1980s, Michaels has produced the show since its inception and will continue to do so until he (possibly) turns the reigns over to Tina Fey. Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza) has also signed on to play NBC producer Dick Ebersol in the movie, with Rachel Sennot (Shiva Baby) playing SNL writer Rosie Shuster.
SNL 1975 will present the “true story of what happened that night behind the scenes in the moments leading up to the first broadcast of SNL. It depicts the 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!’” In addition to directing the movie, Jason Reitman also co-wrote the script with Gil Kenan (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) based on countless interviews the pair conducted with all of the living cast, writers, and crew who were involved in the original production.
The Fabelmans was a deeply personal, semi-autobiographical story loosely based on Steven Spielberg’s own adolescence. The film followed Sammy Fabelman (LaBelle), a young man devoted to filmmaking, an interest that is celebrated and championed by his artistic mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams). Sammy’s successful, scientific father, Burt (Paul Dano), supports Sammy’s work, but views it as an unserious hobby. “Over the years, Sammy has become the de facto documentarian of his family’s adventures, as well as the director of his increasingly elaborate amateur film productions starring his sisters and friends,” reads the official synopsis. “By 16, Sammy is both the primary observer and archivist of his family story, but when his family moves west, Sammy discovers a heartbreaking truth about his mother that will redefine their relationship and alter the future for himself and his entire family.“