This past Wednesday (April 15), the title for the long-awaited sequel to Spaceballs was revealed at CinemaCon. During the Amazon MGM Studios presentation for the upcoming film, Mel Brooks appeared in a pre-taped segment in which he explained that the follow-up to his 1987 classic would not be called Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money, as previously suggested.
The reason, Brooks says, is that, after all these years, he finally found the money—it was in his basement the whole time. Instead, the new installment will simply be called Spaceballs: The New One.
Rick Moranis Returned at CinemaCon, but the ‘Spaceballs 2’ Reveal Was the Real Headliner
Returning to the big screen after a 30-year hiatus is Rick Moranis, who was in attendance at Wednesday’s event. Moranis will reprise his role as Dark Helmet from the original alongside Bill Pullman as Lone Starr, Daphne Zuniga as Princess Vespa, George Wyner as Colonel Sandurz, and Brooks as Yogurt. Newcomers rounding out the cast include Book of Mormon star Josh Gad, Keke Palmer, Anthony Carrigan, and Pullman’s son, Lewis Pullman. Director Josh Greenbaum was also on hand to promote the legacy sequel, which he said was the “honor of a lifetime” to work on.
Since many were eager to hear what Moranis in particular had to say, they made a gag out of the actor being constantly interrupted by his fellow cast members. In another video shown at the event, Moranis’s Dark Helmet was heard saying that he always dreamed of two things: “To steal the air from Druidia and to open wide domestically on 4800 screens.” On top of that, the audience was shown footage of Moranis and Brooks standing at a urinal next to one of the Na’vi from Avatar, indicating that the new film won’t just be parodying the Star Wars movies.
Plot details have so far been kept under wraps, but footage previewed on Wednesday teased, “A universe filled with heroes and villains where the fate of the galaxy rests in the hands of the few, and blasters go pew-pew-pew.” Gad, who previously guest-starred on Brooks’s 2023 Hulu series, History of the World: Part II, co-wrote the movie with Brooks, Dan Hernandez, and Benji Samit. Spaceballs: The New One is set to hit theaters on April 23, 2017. You can check out Brooks’s pre-taped announcement below.
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