In the pantheon of regular Saturday Night Live sketches-turned-feature films, there are good ideas (Wayne's World) and bad ideas (It's Pat). Here are nine you'll never get to see.
In the pantheon of regular Saturday Night Live sketches-turned-feature films, there are good ideas (Wayne's World), bad ideas (It's Pat) and batted-about ideas that won't make it to the silver screen for one reason or another. Here are nine proposed SNL movies you'll never get to see.
1. Hans & Franz: The Girly Man Dilemma (1993)
The idea for a Hans and Franz movie began — and ended — with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who suggested the idea to Kevin Nealon and Dana Carvey when he guest starred in a segment. In 2012, Nealon talked about the folded project with the Tampa Bay Times, admitting that: "Yes, we wrote a musical! Hans & Franz: The Girly Man Dilemma. I wrote it with Conan O'Brien, Robert Smigel and Dana Carvey. Arnold Schwarzenegger was co-producing with us, and he was going to star in it. We got it written, sold it to Sony. But I think Arnold got cold feet."
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In a 2010 interview with the A.V. Club, Smigel said that the problem really came down to the box office bomb that was Last Action Hero, saying "That movie came out, and it was a failure, and I was told by his agent that Arnold decided [adopts Schwarzenegger voice], 'I will never be myself in a movie again! It can't be done, this is the proof. I can't play myself in a movie, automatic failure.'"
2. Bill Swerski's Superfans (1995)
In that same interview with the A.V. Club, Robert Smigel noted that "I'm guilty of writing probably as many SNL movies as anybody, but mine have never been made." He's not kidding. Among those stalled features is Da Movie version of Da Bears sketch, a.k.a. Bill Swerski's Superfans, one of SNL's longest-running sketches, which premiered on January 12, 1991 (with Joe Mantegna as the titular Swerski) and is currently being featured in a State Farm commercial.
When the opportunity arose to turn the sketch into a film, Smigel and Bob Odenkirk (who had created the original sketch together) jumped at the opportunity, with Smigel leaving his job as Conan's head writer to work on the script. But a bad year for SNL on the small screen spelled trouble for anyone involved with the show. "There was an awful article written in New York Magazine about the show and the network wanted to lay down the law," recalled Smigel, which meant "no SNL movies." But the script was not a total loss: In 2010, Smigel, Odenkirk, Mantegna, George Wendt, Mike Ditka and Richard Roeper (as narrator) staged a live reading of the script at Chicago's Just for Laughs festival.
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3. Coffee Talk (1995)
That same New York Magazine article curtailed plans for a feature version of Mike Myers' Coffee Talk, a popular sketch in which Myers starred as Jewish talk show host Linda Richman (a character he based on his mother-in-law). The recent box office failures of other SNL movies at the time — including It's Pat and Stuart Saves His Family — didn't help matters either.
4. Sprockets (2000)
Dieter is yet another Mike Myers talk show host character — this one an unflappable German guy — whose leap to the big screen was aborted. But not due to lack of interest on the studio's part. On June 5, 2000, Universal filed suit against Myers, claiming that he abandoned the project because "the script — which he himself co-wrote and over which he had complete and unfettered control — is no longer acceptable to him." Myers' response, in a countersuit, was that "The question has always been can Sprockets move beyond a sketch into a full-length feature. Despite my greatest efforts, I have yet to achieve that. I cannot in good conscience accept $20 million and cheat moviegoers...with an unacceptable script."
5. The Ambiguously Gay Duo (2005)
A feature-length version of Robert Smigel and J.J. Sedelmaier's animated TV Funhouse sketch has been rumored for years. And in 2005, Stephen Colbert — who voiced Ace, one half of the possibly gay superhero team (Steve Carell played Gary) — even told Ain't It Cool News that "the movie is a go." Eight years later, the closest the script has gotten to Hollywood is a live-action version of the sketch in May of 2011, when Jon Hamm and Jimmy Fallon played the flesh-and-blood versions of Ace and Gary.
6. Key Party (2005)
While we cannot declare Seth Meyers' script for Key Party officially dead, the fact that little has been spoken about the project — based on a one-off sketch that aired in December 2004 — except the announcement that it was being made into a movie in the first place certainly doesn't bode well for its production prospects. Especially since that was in 2005 and there's not even an IMDb listing for the flick. And with Meyers' schedule about to become a whole lot more hectic when he takes Jimmy Fallon's Late Night chair in 2014, who knows when he'll have time to revisit the story of a couple looking to spice up their sex life.
7. The Saturday Night Live Movie (1990)
Given that each episode of Saturday Night Live is essentially a feature-length series of sketches, The Saturday Night Live Movie seems a bit redundant. But in 1990, a script with that very title was written, with some of the show's strongest writing talents — including Conan O'Brien, Robert Smigel, Al Franken, and Greg Daniels — attached as participants. But someone must have wised up to the fact that the cinematic medium offered nothing different for the concept, as few people even knew of the script's existence until 2010.
8. Peepers: A Canticle (2012)
If you've ever found yourself wondering what Chris Kattan has been up to since leaving SNL in 2003, you're not alone. Los Angeles-based writer Justin Becker made a game out of the answer when he wrote a fake script in which he transformed Mr. Peepers, Kattan's apple-eating, suspender-wearing monkey-man, into the sort of mythical creature Peter Sellers played in Being There. Becker attributed the script to Kattan himself (as C.L. Kattan) then began dropping copies of it around California. "I traveled all across the West Coast planting these books like a demented Johnny Appleseed," Becker told San Francisco Weekly. "Chris Kattan's Wikipedia page says that 1000 books were put in stores, but I can neither confirm or deny that number." Though this script was a hoax from the get-go, one can only imagine that it's got the legs to out-earn the measly $21 million Coneheads made in theaters.
9. Stefon (2013)
Fans of Stefon got prematurely excited earlier this year when Bill Hader told Larry King about the idea of turning his New York City know-it-all club kid into a leading man. But then, in almost the same breath, he stated that it would probably never happen. "We talked a little bit about an idea for a movie, and then we were kind of like, 'I don't think it'll work,'" Hader said. "We did have one funny scene that was making John and I laugh, which was Stefon coming out to his family. His parents are, like, blue-collar people from the Bronx." Looks like fans will have to wait until Hader's first SNL guest host gig to see that happen.
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