'SNL' Star Pete Davidson's Movie 'The King of Staten Island' Pulled From Theaters, Will Release Digitally Instead

SNL star Pete Davidson's new movie, The King of Staten Island, has officially been pulled from [...]

By Stephen Andrew

SNL star Pete Davidson's new movie, The King of Staten Island, has officially been pulled from theaters. The semi-autobiographical film, which Davidson co-wrote and stars in, will now be released digitally instead. According to a press release, the Universal Pictures movie will be available to rent on demand on June 12.

The King of Staten Island is directed by Judd Apatow, who also co-wrote the film with Davidson and Dave Sirus. In the film, Davidson plays Scott, a mid-20s slacker who has been struggling with motivation ever since his his father, a firefighter, died when he was seven years old. Scott "spends his days smoking weed, hanging with the guys and hooking up with his best friend (Bel Powley)." With his younger sister (Maude Apatow) going off to college, and his mother (Marisa Tomei) starting to date a new man — a "loudmouth firefighter" played by Bill Burr — Scott will find himself forced to confront his past grief in ways he never anticipated. The movie also co-stars Jimmy Tatro, Pamela Adlon, Steve Buscemi, Kevin Corrigan, and Carly Aquilino.

Apatow spoke about the movie during an interview with Variety, and shared what it was like to work on the film with Davidson, who lost his real-life father to the September 11 attacks in New York. "Well, we spent years writing it and talking about it. And the main subject matter of the film is grief, and a family needing to move forward," Apatow explained. "So we had a lot of honest conversations about how everything affected his life and his family, and then we constructed a fictional story that would force all of those characters to have to make traces in order to not be frozen in their grief or their reactions to it.

He added, "How that becomes funny is through bad behavior. When you're a mess you make mistakes, you don't run your life right, and you don't have healthy relationships. And that's inherently funny. So our movie is walking the line between very serious subject matter and the comedy of people stumbling through life trying to get healthier."

Apatow also shared, "For me, the experience was very emotional, because we got to spend a lot of time with real firefighters in New York. One of our consultants, John Sorrentino, was Pete's father's close friend, and we also put him in the movie as an actor. A lot of the people from Pete's father's firehouse came and visited the set and talked to us in the research stage. I think we were all greatly affected by learning about who these people are, and their willingness to put themselves at risk for other people."

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