“After 40 years we asked, ‘What do the fans want?’ But instead, we’re making this movie.” That’s how Mel Brooks revealed the upcoming sequel to Spaceballs, his 1987cult parody-homage to Star Wars and science fiction cinema in general.
Though the project has been in the pipeline for some time, Brooks’s confirmation of the sequel—which comes with the backing of Amazon MGM Studios and is scheduled for release in 2027, the first film’s 40th anniversary—has raised fans’ expectations. Especially because the announcement was accompanied by other surprises, including that Brooks himself, who turns 99 later this month, will reprise the role of Yogurt (a parodic spin on Yoda).
Another confirmed and much applauded return is that of Bill Pullman, who will reprise his role as Lone Starr (a Han Solo look-alike)—accompanied by his son, Lewis Pullman, in a role that has not yet been revealed. But the most celebrated and unexpected return—announced first by Deadline—has to be that of Dark Helmet himself: Rick Moranis, a comedy icon who hasn’t acted onscreen in nearly 30 years.
Moranis has not shown his face on the big screen since he co-starred with Tom Arnold in Big Bully, a comedy released in 1996, and the straight-to-video sequel Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves in 1997. He has done occasional voice acting work since then, though he hasn’t had a starring role since the straight-to-video sequel to Brother Bear in 2006.
Before then, Moranis was one of the most beloved and recognizable faces in comedy—starring in classics like Ghostbusters 1 and 2; Honey, I Shrunk the Kids; Little Shop of Horrors; and The Flintstones.
“I was working with really interesting people, wonderful people,” Moranis told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015, about the high point of his acting career. “I went from that to being at home with a couple of little kids, which is a very different lifestyle. But it was important to me. I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever. My life is wonderful.”
Rick Moranis did indeed step back from his career to prioritize his children, but that doesn’t tell his whole story. In 1986, he married costume designer Ann Belsky, with whom he had two children (a girl and a boy, Rachel and Mitchell). But in 1991, Belsky died of cancer.
At first, Moranis did his best to continue his career. But about five years later, he realized he needed to stop.
“I pulled out of making movies in about ’96 or ’97. I’m a single parent, and I just found that it was too difficult to manage raising my kids and doing the traveling involved in making movies. So I took a little bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn’t miss it,” he told USA Today in 2005.
“In the last few years I’ve been offered a number of parts in movies, and I’ve just turned them down. I don’t know whether I’ll go back to it or not. I’ve been doing a lot of writing and a lot of parenting, and now I’m doing this.”
Moranis started out as a comedian in his native Canada on radio and live TV specials, earning notice on SCTV for his imitations of Woody Allen and George Carlin. He and his good friend Davd Thomas act together as the comedy duo Bob and Doug McKenzie, characters created to laugh at Canadian stereotypes that became an unexpected pop phenomenon.
”On the last couple of movies I made—big-budget Hollywood movies—I really missed being able to create my own material,” he told Sound & Vision in 2004. “In the early movies I did, I was brought in to basically rewrite my stuff, whether it was Ghostbusters or Spaceballs. By the time I got to the point where I was “starring” in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn’t for me. I’m really not an actor. I’m a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody’s precious words work.”
So though Moranis retreated from the screen, he never stopped working entirely. He has recorded albums that mixed comedy with music—mostly country—such as The Agoraphobic Cowboy, which was released in 2005 and was nominated for a Grammy a year later, and My Mother’s Brisket & Other Love Songs, released in 2013, in which he explores his Jewish heritage.
For quite some time, Moranis also showed little interest in revisiting what had made him famous in the past. “I’m not interested in doing anything I’ve already done, and I thought the second one was a disappointment,” he told Empire in 2013 of his reluctance to reprise his role as Louis Tully in the next Ghostbusters. (In fact, Moranis later turned down a cameo in the reboot that was made with an all-female cast, and has also not appeared in the franchise’s two most recent installments.) But in recent years, perhaps because his children have left the nest, he seems to have changed his mind a bit.
Moranis first proved that in 2018, when he resumed, briefly and only through his voice, the character of Dark Helmet in the sitcom The Goldbergs. In 2020, he agreed to come back for another Honey, I Shrunk the Kids movie, but the pandemic changed Disney’s priorities, and the film was put on hold. Now, however, it seems that his return is assured. May the Schwartz be with you!
Original story in VF Spain.
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