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Kristen Wiig made her final regular appearance on Saturday Night Live last week with a moving send-off that was grander and more heartfelt than the sketch show has given a cast member in quite some time. With half a dozen film projects in the works, Wiig is poised to launch into a long, successful career on the A-list. But then again so was David Spade, Jimmy Fallon, and Tina Fey. While those SNL vets have all flourished in television, Wiig has made no move toward the small screen, and it’s harder to become a bankable star on the level of Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, and Eddie Murphy. Can Wiig leverage her Bridesmaids success to become SNL‘s first major female breakout film star? And, if so, where would she fit in the industry? EW reached out to some authorities on the show’s history to determine Wiig’s chances for headliner success.
“It’s a weird thing, having that SNL brand attached to you when you move from the show to movies,” acknowledges Nick Marx, a Media and Cultural Studies Fellow at the University of Wisconsin. “That assumption is there that successful stars of SNL will eventually leave the show and go on into movies. It’s really a decidedly mixed bag as far as whether it’s an advantage or not when you begin a movie career.” So will she go the route of Ferrell or the way of Chris Kattan? READ FULL STORY »
