Saturday Night Live movies have a decidedly checkered history. In total, 11 sketches were adapted into movies, starting with a bang when the Blues Brothers was born out of a 1976 sketch and became a film hit. Still, it would be over a decade before the second SNL film, Wayne’s World, made it to the big screen. That gap may be because of SNL‘s somewhat fallow ’80s decade, but the success of Wayne’s World led SNL honcho Lorne Michaels to continue these big screen adaptations, mostly in the ’90s.
Unfortunately, only 5 of those 11 films would even make their money back, with Wayne’s World, The Blues Brothers, and their sequels accounting for 4 of them. One of them, It’s Pat, was so bad it bears the scarlet letter of a 0% Rotten Tomatoes rating. It’s no wonder Lorne Michaels stopped making them.
Still, there were many more famous and recurring sketches that reached the early stages of movie development, only to end up being shelved or canceled altogether. For some, their root sketches were so laugh-out-loud hilarious it’s hard to believe they never made it closer to becoming movies. For others, it’s pretty obvious why they never made it past the conceptual stage.
This Fall, SNL will reach its unprecedented 50th season, and while these famous sketches will likely never make their way to the silver screen, it’s still fun to speculate about what they could have been.
8 Coffee Talk
Some of Mike Myers’ greatest SNL offspring were the “Coffee Talk with Linda Richman” sketches in the ’90s, for which Myers mined his Jewish mother-in-law and her many Yiddish expressions. These popular sketches never garnered bigger laughs than when Linda became “verklempt”, usually after the mention of her heroine, the chanteuse Barbra Streisand. At this point, Linda would usually request that her audience “Tawk amongst yourselves” as she gathered her composure and coiffed her heavily-hairsprayed ‘do. The sketch got many reprisals, and Streisand herself eventually made an appearance.
Coffee Talk Never Made It Far Into Development
Coffee Talk suffered failure to launch, as the initial clamor for more Mike Myers content after Wayne’s World faded considerably due to the failure of films like It’s Pat. This may have been for the best, given the complicated gender dynamics that would have seen Myers playing a woman rather than posing as one like Dustin Hoffman did in Tootsie. Still, Myers was in his prime at the time, and it feels like he could have made it work, even if a Coffee Talk movie might not have aged particularly well.
7 The X-Presidents
Another concept borne from SNL‘s ’90s heyday was a film version of “The X-Presidents,” one of the cartoon shorts included in SNL’s brief “TV Funhouse” animated collection. Many of these cartoons came from the slightly twisted mind of SNL writer Robert Smigel, who, along with writer-director Adam McKay (The Big Short), conceived of the animated sketch about ex-Presidents-turned-superheroes.
The Scuttled Movie Attempt Became a Graphic Novel
Despite Smigel and McKay pitching to studio execs that their animated film could be made on a cheap $3 million budget, no studio felt that “The X-Presidents” had enough earning potential, as it usually didn’t air until the late sketch slots on SNL. Undeterred, the two writers refashioned their idea as a graphic novel for Random House in 2000, which is still readily available for purchase online.
6 The Ambiguously Gay Duo
“The Ambiguously Gay Duo” was another animated brainchild of Robert Smigel, and garnered many laughs upon airing on SNL, although its content has proven non-representational and also wouldn’t have aged well as a movie. Smigel was involved in many an SNL movie, which he apparently regrets somewhat, saying, “I’m guilty of writing probably as many SNL movies as anybody, but [my own ideas] have never been made.”
Despite the Help of Stephen Colbert, Smigel Never Got the Film Moving
Smigel and future late-night host Stephen Colbert wrote a live-action script version of the sketch to be made as a feature-length film in the mid-2000s, but the project never made it into production. Hoping to salvage something out of the idea, they instead did a live-action sketch for SNL in 2010, starring Jimmy Fallon and Ed Helms. The sketch wasn’t exactly a world-beater, and proved that a movie version was probably a bad idea anyway.
5 Key Party
The “Key Party” sketch on SNL was a lighthearted spin on the slightly creepy ’70s free-love phenomenon, made famous in a super-cringe scene in the Ang Lee movie The Ice Storm. This game was allegedly a big thing in the sex-positive ’60s and ’70s, when swinger parties were all the rage for the ethically non-monogamous. The sketch was a hit, first used in a Colin Farrell-hosted episode where Horatio Sanz got most of the laughs acting in drag.
Development of a Film Never Got Too Far
While Seth Meyers and Tina Fey saw a potential for a movie and wrote a treatment while they were still the main writers at SNL, the content may have been a bit too risqué for movie format. The two wrote a treatment, but never an actual script draft, after Lorne Michaels apparently steered Meyers and Fey away from pursuing the naughty idea any further.
4 Bill Swerski’s Superfans
During that mid-90s era where seemingly any SNL sketch seemed fair game for movie development, one of the show’s biggest recurring sketches, “Bill Swerski’s Superfans,” got put in play for a potential film. The sketch featured a round table discussion where prototypical Chicago sports fans professed their home-field love for “Daaa Bears.” Chris Farley usually got the biggest laughs, when he would routinely have a heart attack during the sketches, thanks to his penchant for swallowing steaks whole.
Despite a Smigel/Odenkirk Script, Farley’s Success Put the Kibosh on a Superfans Film
Robert Smigel and Bob Odenkirk put together a script for the Superfans in 1995, with Smigel even quitting his writing job as Conan O’Brien’s head writer to work on the movie. Unfortunately for the film’s prospects, Chris Farley’s Tommy Boy became a big success in 1995. Farley’s agents felt their client had outgrown an ensemble film, and took him out of the running for a Superfans movie, effectively stopping the film in its tracks, as Farley was its biggest draw.
3 Stefon
“Stefon,” the loveably-femme character played by Bill Hader, started out in a Ben Affleck-hosted episode in 2008, then moved on to becoming a “Weekend Update” regular thereafter — becoming Bill Hader’s signature character on the show. Stefon became famous for his wild partying at clubs with hilarious names like Gush, Blitzen, Mmhmm, and Jelly Bones, often causing Update host Seth Meyers to break character with uncontrollable laughter.
Seth Meyers and Bill Hader Conceived a Stefon Film Premise
On SNL actor Bowen Yang’s podcast Las Culturalistas, Seth Meyers said he would have had a small part in a Stefon movie, but that his Weekend Update anchor would have died early on — after a long night of partying with Stefon. So someone else would have had to co-star, with James Franco being suggested as a potential clubbing cohort on Yang’s pod. Like many on this list, the idea didn’t advance far past the treatment stage, though Hader is not opposed to the idea of bringing Stefon back to SNL.
2 Sprockets
Another one of Mike Myers’ hit characters on SNL was Dieter, the host of the side-splittingly hilarious “Sprockets” sketch. The artsy German with the thick accent came out of Myers’ work at the Second City improv group, and after the success of the first Austin Powers film, “Sprockets” was optioned for movie development. Myers drafted a script, but was unhappy with the outcome and finally sought to abandon the project.
A Series of Lawsuits Ensued After Myers Tried to Scrap Sprockets
When Myers attempted to make his exit from Sprockets, he was sued by Universal Studios for $3.8 million and Imagine Entertainment for a staggering $30 million. After Myers counter-sued, Dreamworks execs Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg stepped in to mediate, negotiating a settlement wherein Myers eventually agreed to do The Cat in the Hat.
Given Myers’ many great, European-accented characters in Austin Powers, it’s hard to believe that Sprockets wouldn’t have been a successful film, and it remains possibly the movie with the most potential on this list. Instead, we got a bummer-of-a-film with The Cat in the Hat, and Myers’ reputation began to suffer the fate he hoped to avoid by scrapping Sprockets.
1 Hans & Franz: The Girly Man Dilemma
Boy, was the cancelled “Hans & Franz” movie a missed opportunity. After the sketch became a smash hit when the all-star writing team of Robert Smigel, Conan O’Brien and stars Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon made the “Pump You Up” characters two of the most famous in SNL history, a movie, Hans & Franz: The Girly Man Dilemma, was planned. In the film, the bulging duo would follow in their hero Arnold Schwarzenegger’s footsteps and travel to Hollywood to make it big as movie stars.
Arnold Got Cold Feet and the Film Fell Apart
Believe it or not, Arnold himself signed on to co-produce and appear in the film, but the mega-star got cold feet after Last Action Hero bombed and his team decided another satirical film wasn’t a good idea for the Austrian megaman. Still, it seems that the film could have had legs, even without Arnold’s involvement, as Robert Smigel claims the script was hilarious and Carvey and Nealon were then still in their prime. Now, the two have aged out of the roles and all we can do is wonder what could have been.
