Meg Stalter, Bowen Yang, & Conan O’Brien To Star In Please Don’t Destroy Movie

It’s been an insane couple of years for Please Don’t Destroy, the lovable pals who went from day jobs scooping ice cream and working at the YMCA to writing a weekly segment on Saturday Night Live where Pete Davidson and Taylor Swift calls them “three sad virgins.” An honor if I’ve ever heard of one! Now, Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy are getting their own buddy movie for the big screen.

According to Deadline, the film is about three childhood friends who live and work together. When they decide they don’t like where their lives are headed, they go searching for gold treasure rumored to be buried in the nearby mountain. It’s safe to say that chaos and hilarity ensue. Conan O’Brien, Bowen Yang, and Meg Stalter of Hacks will star alongside the trio in the film.

Marshall, Higgins, and Herlihy all wrote the screenplay, and will star in and produce the film. It marks a major moment for the trio, who met at NYU in 2017 and performed together in New York before their self-produced videos started going viral during lockdowns. They were then hired on as writers for Season 47 of SNL where they made gems such “Hard Seltzer,” Please Don’t Destroy’s premiere, which, luckily for them, was the same night Kim Kardashian hosted the show, included “We Got Her A Cat” starring Zoe Kravitz, “Rami Wants A Treat,” starring Rami Malek and more. In addition to putzing around New York doing improv, their brand of comedy manages to be utterly ridiculous and sweetly sincere at the same time.

The production team has some comedy heavyweights, including Judd Apatow and Mosaic’s Jimmy Miller (of Bad Teacher) who will produce the feature. It’s directed by SNL alum Paul Briganti, whose directed dozens of episodes of the show, and acted in Obvious Child alongside Jenny Slate. Additional cast members will be announced in the coming weeks, but we have a feeling some more comedy hotshots will be joining.

Briganti also direct’s the trio’s segments on SNL — helping bring the work from Twitter funny to, well, more mainstream funny. “He really helped us figure out how to translate our style into something that would play in front of the studio audience, which needs a little more hand-holding sometimes, or bigger, clearer moves,” Marshall told The Hollywood Reporter last year. “We’re still figuring it out.”

Sadly, Please Don’t Destroy fans will have to wait more than a year to see these sweet buddies in action. Production is currently underway in North Carolina, where crews have posted up in the South Mountains State Park.

“They filmed here in the park Monday and Tuesday before moving on,” a park ranger told the Shelby Star. “The movie is a comedy from NBC Universal, but I don’t know the director/producers or if it has a title. The main actors are from a group called Please Don’t Destroy, but I don’t know their names.” While it’s true the group hasn’t reached A-list success, they’re well on their way.

The film isn’t expected to hit theaters until August 18, 2023. At least we have something to look forward to! In the meantime, watch “Three Sad Virgins,” below.