Here’s the bad news. Spaceballs: The New One is not coming to us at Ludicrous speed. The sequel won’t be in theaters until April 23, 2027, but the cast and crew still decided that this week, at San Diego Comic-Con, was the time to get the hype train rolling. And hyped we are.
After a hilarious video introduction from Mel Brooks himself, the panel began with an introduction of the cast, minus one major person: Rick Moranis. Everyone was curious where he was so they decided to comb the audience. Spaceballs actors with large combs then walked through the Hall H aisles, finding people in Dark Helmet masks. And, eventually, one was Rick Moranis. Moranis took the stage to thunderous applause and even a chant: “Rick, RIck, Rick.” This is his first Comic-Con.
Moderator Kevin Smith asked producer and star Josh Gad about how this all happened. And, apparently, Gad cold-called Brooks and his team, launching into a 40-minute pitch that Brooks barely understood. But he loved it. Basically, Gad’s idea was that because science fiction and filmmaking in general have changed so much in the past 40 years, Spaceballs was the perfect vehicle to catch everyone up.
Moranis said that he’s been asked about a sequel for years and that the script and idea came at the perfect time for him. He called the decision to do it one of the best he’s ever made. We then saw footage filmed by director Josh Greenbaum of Brooks reuniting first with Bill Pullman and Daphne Zuniga as well as Rick Moranis. Both were very emotional as they all kept in touch, but hadn’t seen each other in decades.
Brooks is returning as Yogurt in the movie but, at age 100, he couldn’t actually be on set. So, it was revealed that they filmed his lines in a studio and recorded his face for motion capture. Originally, he had the dots, but the dots bothered him, so they took them off.
Bill Pullman couldn’t be in San Diego because he’s filming something else but sent a letter. His son, Lewis, who got emotional talking about finally getting to work with his father on something, read the letter. Which didn’t mention him at all. It was very funny.
Keke Palmer wouldn’t say anything about her character, Destiny, except that she loved playing her and found the script to be incredibly funny. Gad also wouldn’t say who, specifically, he was playing except that he is not playing Barf but is, in fact, playing another Mawg. He called the movie, at its heart, a love letter to John Candy as well as some of the other cast members that have passed along the way.
In maybe the best moment of the panel, the team revealed that Spaceballs would be the first film in a cinematic universe called the Almighty Schwartz Saga, aka the ASS. They even revealed plans for an ASSwhole with a massive selection of screens that went by so fast, we couldn’t catch them all. But here are a few:
LOL the Spaceballs Cinematic Saga announced! (This is only part of it) pic.twitter.com/6q8UF4eOFq
— Germain Lussier (@GermainLussier) July 24, 2026
The panel finally ended with some teaser footage that was very close to what was played at CinemaCon. You can read more about it here, but there seemed to be few new scenes (or ones that I didn’t notice a few months ago). Yogurt is in Carbonite, and they call him “Frozen Yogurt.” Dark Helmet fights Yogurt with lightsabers that look like claws. There’s “Spaceballs: The Exercise Ball.” Destiny fights with the Flame Thrower. There’s a scene of white-haired characters all making out, ala Game of Thrones. We see kid versions of the characters fall from the sky down to the ground. Dark Helmet presses a “Reboot” button, and we get a trippy scene mixing Destiny and Lewis Pullman’s characters with the VHS scene from the original movie. It then ended with the Avatar joke from the CinemaCon footage.
Starring Rick Moranis, Josh Gad, Keke Palmer, Lewis Pullman, Anthony Carrigan, George Wyner, Daphne Zuniga, Bill Pullman, and Mel Brooks, Spaceballs: The New One opens on April 23, 2027. Here’s the official plot description:
Somehow, Dark Helmet has returned! Forty years after the events of the first Spaceballs, fifty years after the events of Star Wars: A New Hope, and one year after the events of The Devil Wears Prada 2, the galaxy is once again under threat. A threat so evil, so unstoppable, so completely lacking in any original ideas, that it has vowed to bring back the past… every last bit of it.
With Lone Starr in hiding, Queen Vespa on the throne, and the Schwartz stretched thinner than a franchise releasing TV episodes theatrically, the only hope for the galaxy is Vespa’s undisciplined son, Prince Starburst, and a mysterious Palace advisor named Destiny. Together, they must find Lone Starr, Yogurt, and any other iconic legacy characters fans are demanding before they discover the hard way that, while some threats you can fight, the reboot is not one of them.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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