Which ‘SNL’ Sketches Would Work as Movies Today, According to the Lonely Island
There was once a time when any and all repeat Saturday Night Live characters stood a pretty good chance of landing their own movie, from Wayne and Garth, to the Ladies Man, to the controversial Pat. Even a sketch that was about mute cokeheads groping women in nightclubs to the sounds of Haddaway was somehow turned into a feature film.
But there hasn’t been an official SNL movie since 2010’s MacGruber — not just because the cult favorite was a box-office flop, but also because the movie industry has drastically changed since the ‘90s. And as MovieWeb once pointed out, in the 2000s, SNL’s breakout stars, such as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, successfully launched post-SNL careers on television, rather than on the big screen.
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Will we ever get another SNL movie? At one point in the recent past, there was talk of making a movie focused on Bill Hader’s Stefon, but that was nixed because, according to Hader, “It didn’t work as a sketch! That’s why it was on Weekend Update.”
On the most recent episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, hosts Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer and Andy Samberg were asked by a listener about which sketch they’d “love to make into a movie,” and it didn’t have to be one of their own.
“Mine would be, I would love to see a ‘Falconer’ movie,” Taccone responded. “but I’m obviously a big Will Forte-head.” The Falconer, as you may recall, found Forte playing an advertising executive in Baltimore who randomly leaves his wife, moves to the woods and pals around with a falcon named Donald. Unfortunately for The Falconer, Donald wasn’t always the most helpful.
Schaffer then remind his colleagues that there was one sketch that they had already considered turning into a movie. “I mean, the one we’ve always talked about (doing) was ‘Laser Cats.’” Schaeffer said, referring to the recurring Digital Shorts in which Samberg and Hader pitch Lorne Michaels their janky, low-budget sci-fi movies involving cats that shoot lasers, sometimes with famous filmmakers like Steven Spielberg in tow.
“I would love to do a ‘Laser Cats’ movie,” Taccone agreed. Samberg didn’t choose a sketch, joking that he’s “anti-I.P.” He also neglected to affirm that he, too, would be down for a “Laser Cats” movie, possibly because he wasn’t a huge fan of “Laser Cats 3” after rewatching it for the podcast.
While a “Laser Cats” feature would be pretty fun, if SNL ever does make another film, there’s no way it won’t just be Domingo: The Movie.
