Nicole Kidman‘s AMC ad has achieved a new level of pop culture prominence.
The so campy, you have to love it ode to the power of cinema has been meme’d, made into t-shirts and inspired audiences to stand and salute since it first started airing over a year ago. And now, “Saturday Night Live” has weighed in with its own take, one that perfectly satirizes the cultish response to the 60-second spot.
In it, Chloe Fineman channels Kidman’s Australian accent, runway strut as she finds her seat in the auditorium, and the kind of dramatic hand gestures that exist in movies, but not on Earth. Fineman largely sticks to the original script (which can’t really be improved upon), and repeats the same observations that “somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this.” only this time, Kenan Thompson’s regular moviegoer isn’t entirely sold on Kidman’s gilded aphorisms or the audience’s rapturous embrace of her message.
That’s probably a good thing, because it turns out the “SNL” version of Kidman’s ad ends with her flying above the stadium seating, eyes ablaze like Dark Phoenix, made powerful by the incantations of the adoring throngs.
Fineman may get another chance to break out her note-perfect Kidman impersonation. The actress and Billy Ray, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter who penned the ad, have both signed on for a sequel to the spot.
“I got a text from the chairman of AMC about a month ago asking me if I would write the next one, and of course the answer to that is yes,” Ray told Vanity Fair. “It’s already written.”
