Intro for June 13, 2025

Dear Gossips,  

Mel Brooks is 98 years old—he turns 99 in a couple weeks—and he still knows what the people want: to f-ck around in space. Yesterday, Brooks announced he’s making a sequel to Spaceballs.

I told you we’d be back

— Mel Brooks (@officialmelbrooks.bsky.social) 2025-06-12T16:15:13.404Z

That crawl is simultaneously funny and depressing. Funny because the descriptions of various projects are so spot-on but depressing because they reveal the soulless nature of franchise filmmaking at its worst. Such as:

A movie spinoff of the TV spinoff which is both a prequel and a sequel (The Mandalorian and Grogu)

36 MCU movies with two different Robert Downey Jr.’s (what are we doing here)

4 Beatles movies? (no one thinks this is a good idea!)

Also, “5 Avatars” made me laugh, and the whole Alien/Predator bit is great. Also also, I forgot how good the Spaceballs theme is.

While Mel Brooks will return to play Yogurt, he is not writing or directing Spaceballs 2 (as yet untitled). Josh Greenbaum is directing, and the script is from Benji Samit, Dan Hernandez, and Josh Gad, who will also star in the film alongside Keke Palmer and Lewis Pullman. Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga, and RICK MORANIS will also reprise their roles. Of course, the film will be without the late John Candy, who is irreplaceable. But Mel Brooks loves a bad-taste joke and given his low-brow sensibility and the fact that franchise films have occasionally used computer tools to resurrect dead actors, I wonder if he’ll take a potshot at that in some way, shape, or form. I don’t think he would do anything to dishonor John Candy, but he does have a perfect opportunity to lampoon Star Wars’ ghoulish use of motion-capture to force dead actors to give new performances.

But there is extra excitement for the return of Canadian Treasure Rick Moranis™️, whose last feature film was 1996’s Big Bully. He began a hiatus in 1997, following the death of his wife, Ann Belsky, who passed away in 1991. Moranis said he found balancing work and raising their three children as a single parent too difficult, so he chose his family and backed away from Hollywood. He worked here and there on TV and with voice roles into the 2000s, but he became so elusive Reddit was constantly asking if he was dead. Rick Moranis is not dead! Rick Moranis will be in Spaceballs 2! So will Josh Gad but let’s not focus on that! 

Comedy sequels make me very nervous, because they almost never work, but like Spinal Tap II, I will cross my fingers, eyes, arms, legs, and toes, and hope for the best. I love Spaceballs. Like Spinal Tap and Top Secret, it was in heavy rotation in my house throughout my childhood. A lot of my comedic sensibility was shaped by Mel Brooks, in general, and Spaceballs in particular. Many people will say it is “lesser” Mel Brooks, and to those people I say, there’s no such thing. 

I will cling to Rick Moranis returning to film at long last for this movie, and I will cling to the description of the film offered in the press release:

…[T]he film has been described by those who have not yet read the script as “A Non-Prequel Non-Reboot Sequel Part Two but with Reboot Elements Franchise Expansion Film.” 

It feels right. It feels like they know what they’re doing. Spaceballs took on the marketing bonanza of films like Star Wars, and the sequel is taking on franchises. If anything, it’s overdue. Let’s just hope Josh Gad isn’t playing the son of Barf. 

May the Schwartz be with you,

Sarah