Latest in Lorne Michaels

Lorne Michaels knows when to take cover: The April 11 “quarantine edition” of Saturday Night Live was a brave and bizarre disaster and there was no follow-up last weekend. Through the 45 years of SNL, Michaels' shows have careened from brilliance to idiocy, success to debacle, and his beleaguered troupe will be back…

Hard to imagine, but it's 25 years ago today that Paramount released Tommy Boy, the road-trip comedy that featured the best representation of the movie star potential of Chris Farley. Paired with Saturday Night Live castmate and close friend David Spade, Farley's athleticism and physical comic ability was used to…

Peter Bart and Mike Fleming Jr. worked together for two decades at Daily Variety. In this weekly column, two old friends get together and grind their axes, mostly on the movie business. FLEMING: I'm trying to recall a time while I have covered Hollywood where anything caused the level of disruption we are witnessing…

Apple is in final negotiations on a series order for a musical comedy project starring Saturday Night Live‘s Cecily Strong, from Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video, Despicable Me duo Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, and Universal TV. Written by Paul and Daurio, the as-yet untitled comedy series follows a couple on a backpacking…

Today is a comedy pilot pickup day at NBC as the network made the bulk of its half-hour orders within the past several hours. NBC has given pilot green light to three single-camera projects: Someone Out There, a romantic comedy based on a Spanish format, from Forever creator Matt Hubbard and the writing team of Josh…

Kenan Thompson, who is in his 17th season as a performer on Saturday Night Live, covered a wide range of show lore in a 90-minute appearance Sunday at the New Yorker Festival. The firing of debut cast member Shane Gillis in September before his first episode and after racist jokes and comments surfaced online…

UPDATED with video: Saturday Night Live‘s Emmy win Sunday was hardly unexpected, but the show’s usually stoic creator Lorne Michaels delivered a surprisingly emotional acceptance speech, taking the time to make a touching tribute to the late Chris Farley. Accepting the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series – a…

EXCLUSIVE: HBO has ordered a second season of Los Espookys, its half-hour primarily Spanish-language comedy series from Saturday Night Live alum Fred Armisen and Lorne Michaels' Broadway Video. Created and written by Armisen, Ana Fabrega and Julio Torres, the series is set in a strange and dreamy version of a…

Saturday Night Live veterans Paula Pell, John Lutz, Lorne Michaels and Seth Meyers are teaming on Mapleworth Murders, a comedic murder mystery series for Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s short-form video platform Quibi. Universal TV is the studio. Written by and starring Pell and Lutz, Mapleworth Murders centers…

Lorne Michaels has claimed that Saturday Night Live would struggle to get off the ground if it launched today due to budgetary constraints and move towards "narrowcasting". The SNL creator was giving a keynote address at the Cannes Lions advertising event in France, where he also touched on the history of the show…

Comedy Central’s The Other Two satirizes the world of social media and YouTube fame within a family dynamic and has proved to be so on point that a second season is in the works. At Deadline’s The Contenders Emmys on Sunday, co-creator and EP Sarah Schneider said the upcoming season likely will dig into the newfound…

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures and Lorne Michaels' Broadway Video have purchased feature rights to The Operator: Firing the Shots That Killed Osama Bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior. The film is based on the biography by former Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill, who revealed in the book that he was the SEAL who killed…