Mel Brooks brought the Farce to CinemaCon.
Brooks didn’t attend the annual convention in Las Vegas, but the 99-year-old comedy legend sent a pre-taped video for the long-awaited sequel to his 1987 sci-fi parody “Spaceballs.” In the short clip, he also announced the sequel’s official title, “Spaceballs: The New One.”
The film reunites original cast members Rick Moranis as Lord Dark Helmet, George Wyner as Colonel Sandurz, Daphne Zuniga as Princess Vespa, Bill Pullman as Lone Starr and Brooks as the Yoda-esque being Yogurt. Joining the ensemble is Josh Gad, Keke Palmer, Lewis Pullman and Anthony Carrigan, who take on portray new characters whose identities are being kept secret.
Moranis, Zuniga, Gad and both Pullmans took the CinemaCon stage to debut the “Spaceballs: The New One” trailer, which spoofed everything from “Star Wars” to “Avatar” to “Harry Potter.” Just like the opening to “The Force Awakens,” there’s a sandy desert scene with robots and Jedi-like explorers wandering the dunes — plus someone frozen in carbonite like Han Solo. The sci-fi jokes came fast and quick, including Moranis’ Lord Dark Helmet peeing at a urinal next to a Na’vi from “Avatar.”
Amazon MGM is being similarly coy about the sequel’s storyline, writing in a release that “plot details are being kept under lock, key, and an industrial-strength Schwartz shield.” Like the original, the follow-up film will take place in a galaxy very, very, very, very far away and is expected to riff on popular sci-fi franchises including “Star Wars,” “Star Trek” and “Alien.”
Josh Greenbaum, who is known for “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar” and “Will & Harper,” is directing from a script by Gad, Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez. “Spaceballs: The New One” is set to release on April 23, 2027.
Brooks, who co-wrote and directed the original sci-fi spoof, shared news of the sequel last year with a video in the signature “Star Wars” crawl, which read: “Thirty-eight years ago, there was only one ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. But since then there have been … a prequel trilogy, a sequel trilogy, a sequel to the prequel, a prequel to the sequel, countless TV spinoffs, a movie spinoff of the TV spinoff, which is both a prequel and a sequel […] But in 38 years, there has only ever been one ‘Spaceballs.’ Until now…”
