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The Real Reason SNL Stopped Making Movies
Apr 1, 2025
Saturday Night Live has been a cultural staple for over 40 years. Building memorable characters that audiences would want to see week after week. The characters on SNL became so popular that Lorne Michaels finally started creating feature films around them. Movies like Waynes World, The Blues Brothers, and Coneheads proved that SNL Characters could translate from small to big screen. But over the coming years the popularity started to fade, and eventually lead to the death of seeing our favorite Saturday Night Live characters on the big screen.
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we're not worthy we're on a mission from god small cowbell live from new york it's saturday night
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this is saturday night live and it is known for churning out some of the most iconic and funniest
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characters of all time some of these characters became so popular that they would eventually
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break out and wind up starring in their own feature-length film and for a while it felt
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like this was actually part of the pathway to success for these performers however we haven't
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really seen an SNL breakout character in over a decade. Saturday Night Live is the longest-running
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sketch comedy program in television history. Produced by Lorne Michaels, SNL began airing in
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1975, pulling top-tier talent from various live comedy venues and placing them in a primetime slot
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on NBC that was previously reserved for reruns of The Johnny Carson Show. It has since become a
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tin pole for burgeoning comedic talent to showcase their abilities alongside some of the biggest stars
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from the film, television, and music industry. Since its inception, Saturday Night Live has focused on delivering high-concept sketches
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that highlight the performer's ability to morph themselves into a caricature of someone else
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in order to drive the comedy of an individual sketch during the show's 90-minute runtime
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This is the sound a doggy makes. Mr. Connery. Mool. Saturday Night Live has relied on characters to attract an audience week after week
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These characters were initially extremely successful with home-viewing audiences. People were tuning in week after week to see if they might get a new installment of their
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favorite character's sketch. In the beginning, we had the Wild and Crazy Guys, Irving Mameway, Rosanna Rosanna Dana
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and the Lounge Singer. Slowly but surely, these characters were becoming household names
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People would quote lines from Saturday Night Live around the office in the same way your
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least favorite uncle does his Borat impression. Respect is nice. Borat. The character was truly king at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City
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And year after year an ever roster of comedians would showcase their chops for creating hilarious new personas to keep audiences laughing When a character hit with home audiences they seemed to be added to an ongoing rotation of sketches that would show up with great frequency And I can see Russia from my house
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The first character to ever recur on Saturday Night Live were the Killer Bees in 1975, led by John Belushi
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and assorted members of the ensemble. These characters were never intended to be recurring
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In fact, NBC wanted to cut them after their appearance in Saturday Night Live's first episode
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According to Lorne Michaels, NBC's only note for the pilot episode of SNL was Cut the Bees
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NBC and Lorne Michaels had a tense relationship over the show, primarily due to the studio questioning every single decision that was being made during the show's production
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This Cut the Bees note irritated Lorne Michaels, so he ended up leaving the bees in the show to send a message to the network about who was actually in charge of the show
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From then on, slowly but surely, more and more characters began returning week after week
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Bill Murray's Nick the Lounge singer would serenade audiences with songs about Star Wars
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Gilda Radner's Rosanna Rosanna Dana would provide audiences with very New York perspectives on current events
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And on April 22, 1978, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd debuted two characters who would eventually break out into the first ever feature-length film to be based on SNL characters with The Blues Brothers
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Are you the police? No, ma'am. We're musicians. By this time, John Belushi had become a big star thanks to his role in the 1978 film Animal House
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so greenlighting a film with him at the center of it was really a no-brainer. John Belushi and Animal House director John Landis both wanted to make a Blues Brothers movie
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but there wasn't a script. So Dan Aykroyd, who at this point had never written a screenplay before
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wrote down 324 pages worth of story and handed it off to Universal Pictures
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who then tasked John Landis with editing the script into something usable
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The Blues Brothers ended up becoming a colossal hit, generating over $57 million at the box
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office in 1980. The success of The Blues Brothers opened a whole realm of possibilities within the world
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of Saturday Night Live, and it seemed to spark a focus shift within the actual sketches the
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show was producing. SNL began moving away from purely zany and wild antics and towards the creation of something memorable The addition of Eddie Murphy in 1980 gave us characters like Velvet Jones and Gumby But after that the show sort of went into a lull
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Nobody was really jumping out of the screen and grabbing our attention. Not even Robert Downey Jr.'s suitcase boy could hold viewers' attention for very long
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I know why whales beach themselves. Spider-Man told me! This all began to change in the late 80s, early 90s
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when SNL brought in a fresh crop of performers to hopefully bring audiences back to Saturday nights
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Many members of this generation of the ensemble would go on to stardom. Phil Hartman, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, and David Spade, among others
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were able to transition to successful projects from their SNL heyday. However, none of these performers would reach the heights that Mike Myers and Dana Carvey were able to reach
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with two original characters who would capture the voice of Generation X
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in an almost perfect prestige of rock culture with Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar
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Wayne's World was the second film that SNL greenlit, and it exploded with popularity
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The film ended up grossing over $121 million and sent Lorne Michaels on a search to generate
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similar levels of box office success with some of SNL's other characters
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The next SNL breakout film was a vehicle for one of Julia Sweeney's more popular characters
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with the release of 1994's It's Pat. Good old androgynous Pat! This film was a complete and total disaster at the box office, and to this day
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Its pat has only generated a paltry $60,000 in revenue. After that, Lorne Michaels produced a film featuring some radioactive characters from the 1970s
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with the release of 1992's Coneheads, starring SNL alums Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin
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This film didn't make an enormous splash at the box office either. 1994's Wayne's World 2 failed to do what its predecessor had done and ended up flopping
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While the film is undoubtedly hysterical, it came off as being a little too absurd
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and seemed to try a little too hard to pander to the original film's success
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It was still successful, it just didn't come anywhere close to making the impact Wayne's World did
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Al Franken's Stewart Saves His Family failed. A Night at the Roxbury failed. Superstar failed SNL then tried to recreate the success of The Blues Brothers with the release of The Blues Brothers 2000 But without John Belushi portrayal of Jake Blues this film also failed The Ladies Man failed And despite generating some cult success after its home release
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MacGruber initially failed. This was back in 2010, and there hasn't really been an SNL movie
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released since then. As time went on, Saturday Night Live's entire vibe began to change. The show
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that was once a seemingly humble platform showcasing amazing and otherwise unknown performers
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began to feel really glitzy and glamorous. In the 2010s, Saturday Night Live began slowly pivoting
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away from character-based sketches and leaning more on premise to drive the comedy of their
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sketches. SNL has slowly shifted its content to deliver on the laughs in an incredibly short
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amount of time. Modern SNL sketches tend to run about three or four minutes long, and this is just
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not enough time to introduce or develop funny characters who feel alive. The characters that
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do end up making it onto the show now are pretty much one-note weekend update bits that just sort
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of heighten the same joke three or four times and then end somewhat abruptly. It's football sleazen
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and if you want to nail your date you're gonna have to tail some gate okay? Sure there have been
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a few standouts. Kate McKinnon's close encounter character pops up every now and then. Vanessa
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The Bear and Cicely Strong's porn star characters had a pretty good run as well, but even so
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these characters are only popping up three or four times. It's nowhere near the frequency with which SNL
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delivered on characters in the years prior. Instead of creating rich and interesting characters
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for an audience to look forward to returning week after week, they have been forced to generate shorter
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easy-to-follow sketches in hopes of creating the next viral internet sensation. The hiring of comedy groups like The Lonely Island
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Good Neighbor, and Please Don't Destroy are all indicative of this pivot toward creating content geared toward an online audience
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The goal isn't to create a box office film centered around a deep exploration of a comedic character anymore
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Instead, there has been a pivot toward creating multiple viral video sensations every single week in hopes of drawing an audience
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From the weekend update zingers to the performances of the musical guests
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one can't help but think about what we might be missing in our refusal to slow down and explore a little bit before jumping into the next thing
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