Spaceballs, the T-shirt! Spaceballs, the coloring book! Spaceballs, the lunch box! Spaceballs, the breakfast cereal! Spaceballs — the sequel! Comedy legend Mel Brooks, who spoofed Star Wars and sci-fi with his space-opera parody Spaceballs, is reportedly heading back to a galaxy very, very, very, very, far away. According to The InSneider, Brooks is developing a Spaceballs sequel at Amazon MGM Studios with Josh Gad set to star and produce alongside Brooks’ History of the World: Part II producer Kevin Salter.
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Josh Greenbaum, director of Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and the Gad-voiced Strays, is directing the decades-later followup written by Gad, Benji Samit (Central Park) and Dan Hernandez (Koala Man). Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was behind the 1987 original Spaceballs, which starred Bill Pullman as Eagle 5 pilot Lone Starr, John Candy as his half man,half dog sidekick Barf, Daphne Zuniga as Princess Vespa of Planet Druidia, Joan Rivers as the voice of the gold-plated droid Dot Matrix, Rick Moranis as Planet Spaceball’s Lord Dark Helmet, and Brooks as President Skroob and Yogurt, the keeper of the greater magic called The Schwartz.
Gad previously collaborated with Brooks, 97, for an episode of Gad’s 2015 FX mockumentary series The Comedians that featured the legendary Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein director, who then recruited Gad for his 2023 TV sequel to 1981’s History of the World, Part I. Gad teased the as-yet-untitled Spaceballs 2 earlier in June when he shared a censored script title page that barely concealed a credit: “Based on characters created by Mel Brooks.”
“Just handed in a film script that I think may be the funniest and best thing I’ve ever worked on and I am so freaking excited,” the Frozen star captioned the post, adding that co-writing the script with Samit and Hernandez “has been heaven on Earth and many other planets as well. Love you boys!”
Samit and Hernandez’s credits include episodes the White House-set sitcom 1600 Penn, which starred Gad, and the feature films Pokèmon: Detective Pikachu, the animated The Addams Family 2, and the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Salter produced the 2015 HBO special Mel Brooks Live at the Geffen; the 2022 animated movie Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, based on Brooks’ Blazing Saddles; and the sequel series History of the World: Part II, which was narrated and executive produced by Brooks.
The original Spaceballs earned $38.1 million and received mixed reviews when it opened at the box office in June 1987, but has since become a cult classic.
“Fox tried to bribe me to do Spaceballs 2, but I always said no,” Brooks told EW for the movie’s 25th anniversary in 2012.”I don’t want in any way to compete with the movie or hurt it. And as amusical [á la The Producers or Young Frankenstein], I don’t think I could do better [than the movie].” Brooks added that Spaceballs, which spawned a short-lived animated series in 2008, remains his most popular film.
“I’ll tell you, I’ve made a dozen films — some of them really big hits — and all of them have been left in the dust by Spaceballs.It never stops selling,” he said at the time. “When I think about getting a bottle of wine in arestaurant, I say, ‘My God, they want $90 for this wine!’ Thensomething in me says, ‘The hell with it — Spaceballs will cover it.’ [Laughs] I don’t think there was more than one or two critics who liked it, but by far the most letters I get are from people who love Spaceballs.”
