Joe Mantegna says ‘Bill Swerski’s Superfans’ movie was in works when Chris Farley died

One of the most prominent Saturday Night Live sketches of the early 1990s was “Bill Swerski’s Superfans,” known for their prominent Chicago accents and love of the Chicago Bears, or “Da Bears.” And according to Joe Mantegna, it was supposed to be a movie.

Mantegna, who starred as Bill Swerski in the sketches, was a recent guest on The Rich Eisen Show. During his appearance, Mantegna said that in the late 1990s, a movie was in the works. Chris Farley’s character, Todd O’Connor, was supposed to be the central figure of the movie. But Farley’s death in December 1997 brought an end to the project.

“They wrote a movie for it,” Mantegna said. “And we were supposed to do the movie. Chris Farley was so huge at the time and they wanted to build it around his character. Chris passed away. And it was one of those things that, that was it. That kind of put the nix on doing the movie version of it.”

That would not have been uncharted territory. In Saturday Night Live‘s 50 years on the air, nine recurring sketches have been made into 11 movies (The Blues Brothers and Wayne’s World both had two movies made). And with the exception of The Blues Brothers in 1980 and MacGruber in 2010, all of those movies were released between 1992 and 2000.

While the movies were never made, Mantegna said that two readings of the movie were done in Chicago. Mike Ditka, the hero of “Bill Swerski’s Superfans,” participated in the first one. He was supposed to participate in the second, but that never came to be.

“In typical Ditka form — we did two performances. He did the first one, we took a dinner break, he went out to dinner with his wife and forgot there was a second one,” Mantegna said. “But luckily, I forgot what pitcher it was, a former pitcher for the White Sox came to the second one. And we got him to do Ditka’s part.”