‘Spaceballs: The New One’ prompts belly-laughs in Comic-Con’s biggest venue

By Shor M. Masori in San Diego

Thirty-nine years after Spaceballs first reached movie theaters, Hall H in the San Diego Convention Center erupted in thunderous laughter during a panel session about the forthcoming sequel, Spaceballs: The New One.

The wraparound screens counted down, skipped from eight to six with a “just kidding,” and sent stars streaking across the room before revealing the cast and filmmakers to roughly 6,000 fans. Amazon MGM Studios plans to release the film on April 23, 2027, 40 years after the original.

Released in 1987, Spaceballs follows space pilot Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his half-man, half-dog companion Barf (John Candy) as they rescue Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) from Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and President Skroob. The villains plan to steal the air from Vespa’s home planet, Druidia, while Lone Starr learns to use the Schwartz with help from Yogurt, Mel Brooks’s merchandising-obsessed parody of Yoda. The film primarily spoofed Star Wars while drawing jokes from Star Trek, Alien, and other science-fiction movies.

Brooks, who is Jewish, played both Yogurt and President Skroob in the original and returns as both characters in the sequel.  The original film’s Jewish wordplay, including the Schwartz and Princess Vespa being Druish, continued in the jokes shared by the filmmakers and the Hall H audience.

The now 100-year-old Brooks opened the panel by video. He joked that he was missing the stage because he was searching the convention floor for a rare Charizard Pokémon card, then explained why he had never attended Comic-Con: “They don’t pay.”

The Sequel Strikes Back

The sequel began while Josh Gad was developing Shrunk, a proposed continuation of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids that would have brought back the semi-retired Rick Moranis. Gad showed his daughter Moranis’s movies, including Little Shop of Horrors, Ghostbusters, and Spaceballs.

When Yogurt promised a sequel at the end of Spaceballs, she asked to watch it. Gad explained that it was only a joke, but the question stayed with him. After literally dreaming about what a sequel could be, he called Brooks and longtime producing partner Kevin Salter in 2022 and delivered a 40-minute pitch.

Brooks listened quietly before answering, “Josh, it sounds like you really got your finger on the pulse. I don’t know half of what you’re talking about, but I really like it.”

To script the film, Gad brought in longtime writing partners Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit, who met each other at Brown University.  Gad asked them, “You guys are Jews. Would you ever want to do a Spaceballs?” They emphatically agreed.

He approached director Josh Greenbaum just as forwardly, asking whether he liked Mel Brooks. Greenbaum’s answer: “duh.” Greenbaum said pitching jokes to Brooks could be terrifying because he is “literally the funniest person who has ever lived.” An idea might be followed by a long silence, leaving them to wonder whether they had damaged the legacy.

Brooks’s advice before filming was simple: “Don’t say ‘cut’ first. It’s ‘action,’ and then ‘cut.’” Greenbaum understood it as a reminder that both the movie and the process of making it were supposed to be fun. The writers also cited Brooks’s rule for comedy: “Never punch down, always lift up.” A recording-session blooper showed that his guidance could be less delicate. After hearing one proposed idea, Brooks told them, “Your idea is gonna fuck it all up.”

Behind-the-scenes footage showed Brooks recording his lines while director Josh Greenbaum described digitally recreating Yogurt without the gold makeup and heavy prosthetics used in the original. The visual-effects team initially placed tracking dots on Brooks’s face. Brooks hated them. Greenbaum asked whether the dots were truly necessary. After some hesitation, the team said no and agreed to do the additional work without them.

Return of the Spaceballs

For Daphne Zuniga, returning brought back memories of a different Hollywood era. She was 24 when she auditioned for Brooks, who told her, “You’re a princess. You’re my princess. You’re perfect,” and took her to see Vespa’s Mercedes spaceship. When Zuniga met costume designer Donfeld and saw the cut of Vespa’s gown, she apologized for her lack of cleavage. When a fan shouted that Zuniga still did not look Druish, she and the audience laughed.

“Don’t worry, honey,” she remembered him saying. “I can get a 2-by-4 cleavage.” Her concern this time was whether her orthotics would fit inside Vespa’s shoes.

Bill Pullman, who was filming in London, appeared by video and also claimed he was actually busy tracking down a rare Charizard card. He also sent a letter for his son Lewis to read. The letter praised the cast, the hair and makeup team, and even Pullman’s agent, who had given him a candle that smelled like 16th-century Scotland. Lewis alone received no praise. Instead, his father told him to repay his mother for a cellphone bill from Australia.

Lewis said his first instinct was to decline the role of Prince Starburst, the son of Lone Starr and Vespa. He did not want to step into his father’s Spaceballs legacy, and the two had imagined eventually making a gritty drama together. Bill urged him to read the script. Lewis said he rarely laughs aloud while reading, but this one kept breaking through.

“This is one of the funniest scripts I’ve ever read,” he said. “I would be a fool. It would be weird if I didn’t do it.”

The Phantom Moranis

Among all the returning cast members, the most anticipated was Rick Moranis. Before bringing him out, moderator Kevin Smith explained what Spaceballs meant in his family. The first time his father watched it, Smith said, he laughed so hard that he urinated in his pants. For the rest of his life, whenever a Brooks movie came on, he would say, “Mel Brooks owes me a set of pants.”

Smith then ordered the Spaceballs troopers to “comb the audience.” Carrying giant combs, they searched Hall H until they found Moranis hidden among the fans beneath Dark Helmet’s oversized helmet.

The audience rose as Moranis made his way to the stage. It was his first Comic-Con appearance and one of his most visible public appearances in years. Moranis joked that he had not retired; he had merely been “negotiating” with Brooks for the past 39 years. Because the oversized glasses he wore in his movies used his actual prescription, Moranis said he kept pairs from several productions.

“All these years, instead of playing with my dolls, I’ve been playing with my glasses,” he said. Looking at the younger cast, he noted he felt an astounding sense of time warp as they were about the same age he had been when he made the original.

Attack of the Next Generation

The returning actors will be joined by a new generation of Spaceballs. Gad addressed speculation that he might be replacing John Candy’s Barf. He said he plays a new mawg and that Barf belongs only to Candy. The film, he said, is a love letter to Candy and will also honor Joan Rivers, Dom DeLuise and Dick Van Patten. Gad placed Candy and Moranis on his personal Mount Rushmore of comedy.

When Zuniga told her niece she was returning, the initial response was, “That’s nice, Auntie. God, you’re so old.” The reaction changed when Zuniga mentioned Keke Palmer. Her niece suddenly wanted every detail.

Gad said Palmer had appeared on the mock poster used to pitch the film to Amazon before anyone approached her. When she read the script and agreed to play palace adviser Destiny, he called it kismet. Palmer joked that the filmmakers sent people to the set of another project to watch her read the script and report which jokes made her laugh.

Revenge of the Schwartz

The original Spaceballs primarily parodied Star Wars and the science-fiction films surrounding it, which were much more novel at the time. The sequel has four additional decades of prequels, reboots, streaming spinoffs, legacy characters and interconnected cinematic universes to target.

The panel closed by parodying the one thing modern franchises seem unable to resist: a cinematic universe. The wrap-around screens revealed phase after phase of the imaginary “Spaceballs Cinematic Universe,” called “The Almighty Schwartz Saga” as a whole. The creators joked that they just hope they don’t “stretch this A.S.S whole too far” over the coming years, promising to keep it tight

In Hall H, where Marvel previously unveiled its own phase charts, the crowd went ballistic.

Palmer said she had initially worried that a legacy sequel could become a corporate exercise, but the script changed her mind. She added that this was one of the rare situations where you’re incredibly glad a studio put a massive budget behind a comedy.

Moranis said people still ask him why movies are not made the way they used to be. He believed the sequel could provide an answer.

“I really believe this is one of those movies that they used to make,” he said.