It’s hard to fathom many sketch comedy series getting the sort of big screen biopic treatment that Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night offers. However, SNL is not your typical sketch comedy series. Now in its 50th season, it is a true television institution. The show has launched the careers of a staggering number of incredibly successful writers and actors. Saturday Night is also hardly the first time SNL’s existence has directly resulted in a feature film. In fact, we’re now in the double digits when it comes to SNL-based movies.
Here’s a rundown of every Saturday Night Live-based movie to date.
The Blues Brothers (1980)
John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd’s Jake and Elwood Blues weren’t genuine sketch comedy characters. They would tend to appear on SNL doing full musical performances. But their leap to the movies was an extremely successful $115 million-grossing action-comedy that delivered great musical set pieces, memorable dialogue (“We’re on a mission from God!”) and impressive action, via one hell of a destructive car chase.
Blues Brothers proved Saturday Night Live could be a viable source for movie material. So Hollywood would strike while the iron was hot… 12 years later.
Wayne’s World (1992)
With many a kid already parroting their catchphrases, Mike Myers and Dana Carvey took low rent public TV hosts Wayne and Garth from their popular recurring sketches into a big screen adventure. The production was a rocky one, including notable clashes between Myers and director Penelope Spheeris. But Wayne’s World was a major hit.
Wayne’s World made $183 million on a $20 million budget and was quoted and referenced incessantly thanks to its funny and knowing send up of all things pop culture. This includes everything from a sequence that called out distracting product placement to the delightful sight of Wayne, Garth, and their buddies lip syncing and headbanging to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” That latter scene became so popular, it turned Queen’s 1975 song back into a modern hit. It cemented the song as a radio staple even beyond what it had been before.
Coneheads (1993)
Paramount’s follow-up to Wayne’s World, Coneheads, surprisingly dated back to the show’s first five seasons. Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtain reprised their roles as Beldar and Prymaat. The characters are two married, cone-headed aliens pretending to be humans while living in suburban America.
But the results were less than stellar, with Coneheads receiving negative reviews, many of which noting that sketch comedy characters often work in sketch length stories. It also flamed out at the box office, making just $21 million on a $30 million budget.
Wayne’s World 2 (1993)
Opening the same year as Coneheads, Wayne’s World 2 found a much larger audience. Still, despite some funny bits, both its box office and the response from critics and audience members reflected the unmistakable air of diminished returns.
Wayne’s World 2 earned $72 million, a very nice amount for your standard comedy of this sort, but a huge drop from the first film. A third Wayne’s World would not be in the cards and a few years later, Myers would drop out from doing another SNL-based movie, Dieter, based on his Sprockets sketches.
It’s Pat (1994)
The SNL movie boom of the ’90s hit its bleakest period in the middle of the decade with a couple of barely-released, barely seen films. First was It’s Pat, which is a bit interesting behind-the-scenes in that it’s the only SNL-based movie made by Disney (via their Touchstone label). But clearly they were not happy with the end result, given they only opened the movie in 33 theaters, where it received abysmal attendance alongside its abysmal reviews.
The sketches featuring Julia Sweeney’s androgynous character are now more problematic under a modern lens, which is something Sweeney herself has grappled with. But in 1994, It’s Pat was the most egregious example yet of something that worked as a sketch feeling like it was now being stretched out way further than the concept allowed, repeating the same joke over and over.
Stuart Saves His Family (1995)
Technically, Stuart Saves His Family “beat” It’s Pat at the box office, making over $912K vs. Pat’s $60K. But that’s a showdown with no real winner. Al Franken’s Stuart Smalley sketches were great, but at this point, it felt like major miscalculations were occurring when it came to what an audience might find appealing as a sketch vs. what they would pay for as a movie.
Though Stuart Saves His Family’s reviews were by and large, negative, there were some bright spots, including two thumbs up from Siskel & Ebert. Through the years, a small but appreciative audience has come to praise the Harold Ramis-directed film and its well-meaning look at self-help guru Stuart and his relationship with his family (including Vincent D’Onofrio as his brother).
Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)
The death of John Belushi in 1982 meant the Blues Brothers sequel was missing one of its two core original performers. And it probably speaks to the hole Belushi left that no less than three characters (played by John Goodman, Joe Morton, and J. Evan Bonifant) were brought in to replace him. Yet it still couldn’t give the movie a spark of its own, with the exception of some lively musical numbers.
Returning director John Landis criticized Universal for their insistence that the film be PG-13, despite the first entry being R (mainly due to its language). He may be right that it could have been better as an R, but they probably should have left well enough alone regardless. Blues Brothers 2000 made about $32 million, but given it cost $30 million, that wasn’t a good investment.
A Night at the Roxbury (1998)
As Saturday Night Live moved into a new era, with a new cast of breakout stars, another batch of SNL-based movies came in rather quick succession, based on then-current sketches. The first was A Night at the Roxbury, with Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan playing two brothers who desperately want to be the coolest guys at the nightclub.
The Roxbury sketches, powered by Haddaways’ earworm “What is Love,” were red hot when the movie was made. Bringing in $30 million on a $17 million budget, A Night at the Roxbury ultimately was a decent money maker, despite terrible reviews, especially as it moved to VHS and DVD. The movie had a couple of solid laughs, though it proved the difficulties in taking a nearly dialogue-free, music-driven sketch and trying to make a full fledged film around it.
Superstar (1999)
Molly Shannon took her ultra-weird high school character, Mary Katherine Gallagher, to the big screen with the next Saturday Night Live movie. Superstar’s reception was similar to Roxbury, including reviews that bemoaned that the joke from the original sketches quickly wore out its welcome at feature film length. But it also was similar by bringing in around $30 million, this time on a leaner $14 million budget.
In an era where mid-budget comedies becoming modest box office successes was much more encouraged by the studios than it is now—particularly with a post-theatrical market that could greatly boost initial profits—the SNL movies were a dependable bit of programming for Paramount at the time. The studio released A Night at the Roxbury, Superstar and the next film on this list over the course of three consecutive Octobers.
The Ladies Man (2000)
A nearly decade-long run of Paramount SNL movies (only It’s Pat and Blues Brothers 2000 were made by other studios during this period) concluded with The Ladies Man, as Tim Meadows’ radio host Leon Phelps took his turn at bat.
Bad reviews for SNL-based movies were now expected and that was again the case with The Ladies Man, despite a fun supporting cast that included Billy Dee Williams, Eugene Levy, and Julianne Moore. Box office-wise, it made $24 million on a $13.7 million budget. It was hardly a Pat or Stuart-type disaster but still a drop from Roxbury and Superstar, and Paramount decided they had gotten all they could out of SNL by that point.
MacGruber (2010)
The first new SNL-based movie in a decade arrived via Universal with MacGruber. Directed by The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, the MacGruber movie expanded Will Forte’s MacGyver riff into an hysterical, unhinged parody of the action genre in general. Unfortunately, its 48% Rotten Tomatoes score reflected divisive initial reaction, and the movie was a box office bomb, failing to even make back its $10 million budget.
But the years since were kind to MacGruber, as its reputation grew and it became a beloved cult favorite—endorsed by no less than Chrisopher Nolan!—which ultimately led to it getting a 2021 follow-up via a Peacock streaming series.
Saturday Night (2024)
Now, there is a new movie that completely owes its existence to SNL in a different manner. It is not an adaptation of any specific SNL character or sketch. Instead it’s a biographical comedy-drama that depicts what went on backstage in the 90 minutes preceding the first-ever episode of the series. Saturday Night will include a talented cast playing numerous iconic SNL producers, writers and cast members.
It remains to be seen if the Sony-released Saturday Night will be a mainstream success. But if it is, maybe it’ll get a studio to suddenly greenlight What Up with That?: The Motion Picture or The Californians Go to New York.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
There are a handful of movies that don’t quite fit the usual criteria for what we think of as Saturday Night Live-based movies. But they are, at the least, strongly SNL-adjacent as far as their origins are concerned.
Bob Roberts (1992)
Tim Robbins wrote, directed and starred in 1992’s Bob Roberts. It’s a well reviewed mockumentary in which he portrays a slick (and frequently singing) right-wing politician. Saturday Night Live has occasionally included short films made by people from outside the show. And that was the case six years before Bob Roberts opened with one such short, in which Robbins introduced the character. Things would eventually go a bit full circle when Robbins, while hosting SNL later in 1992, played Bob Roberts once more during a sketch.
Office Space (1999)
Mike Judge’s beloved comedy had a similar path as MacGruber, going from box office dud to cult favorite. And both movies also boast a history somewhat tied to SNL. Years before his movie, Judge introduced the socially awkward, stapler-obsessed character from Office Space in three Milton animated shorts. Those shorts aired on SNL episodes between 1993-1994. However, an additional caveat comes into play here. At least one of the Milton shorts actually made its debut even earlier. It first aired on MTV’s animated anthology series Liquid Television in the early 90s.
A Mighty Wind (2003)
Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer are longtime comedic collaborators, which most famously resulted in the creation of Spinal Tap. But their other notable fictional band, The Folksman, first sprung forth from Saturday Night Live long before they were a central part of Guest’s mockumentary about a trio of folk acts reuniting.
There are a lot of asterisks here, though. McKean, Guest and Shearer’s ongoing friendship and partnership means we likely would have met the Folksman eventually no matter what. But the fact remains that on a 1984 episode of SNL—hosted by McKean, during the period when Guest and Shearer were cast members—the three first publicly appeared as the Folksmen. It was a segment about the band having a long-awaited reunion that pre-dates the similar plotline in A Mighty Wind by nearly 20 years.