Rick Moranis just did something he hasn’t done in his entire career, walk into Comic-Con. The actor made his first-ever appearance at the San Diego convention this week, showing up for the Spaceballs: The New One panel and receiving a standing ovation along with chants of “Rick! Rick! Rick!” from a packed Hall H crowd. For an actor who has spent nearly three decades almost entirely out of the spotlight, it was a genuinely rare sight, and the audience knew it.
The reveal itself was staged like something out of the original film. Moderator Kevin Smith told the crowd they needed to “comb the audience” to find Moranis, a callback to a line from the 1987 movie. A few fans in fake Dark Helmet costumes were pulled out first as decoys, before the real Moranis was found sitting quietly among the crowd in his own helmet, and he made his way up to the stage from there.
Rick Moranis has been away from live-action film since 1997, and he didn’t shy away from addressing that hiatus directly. “I really wasn’t retired. I was just negotiating,” he joked, revealing that conversations about a possible Spaceballs sequel with Mel Brooks actually date all the way back to 1989, decades before this version finally came together. Asked what changed now, Moranis credited both timing and the cast. “It just felt like, this is it. It’s time, and yes. I said yes, and it is the best decision I’ve ever made,” he said, adding that learning Bill Pullman would return alongside his own son, Lewis Pullman, played a real role in his decision.
The reason behind that long break has always been personal rather than professional. Rick Moranis stepped back from acting in the late 1990s after his wife, Ann Belsky, died of cancer in 1991, choosing to raise their two children as a single father instead of continuing to travel for film shoots. He has said in past interviews that he never considered himself formally retired, occasionally taking voice roles and writing projects, but Comic-Con marked his clearest public return yet.
He wasn’t alone on stage. Josh Gad, one of the sequel’s writers and producers, sat beside him, along with Daphne Zuniga, returning as Princess Vespa, and George Wyner, reprising his role as Colonel Sandurz. Director Josh Greenbaum, actors Keke Palmer, Lewis Pullman and Anthony Carrigan, and writers Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit rounded out the panel. Josh Gad shared that part of the idea for the sequel came from watching Morani’s old films with his own daughter, who kept asking why there was no “part 2”, a question he initially brushed off as a joke before it eventually turned into a real pitch to Brooks.
Josh Gad also spoke about the film’s underlying idea, explaining that the team wanted Spaceballs: The New One to reflect just how different the movie industry looks nearly 40 years later, particularly around Hollywood’s obsession with nostalgia and franchise filmmaking. Where the original had one trilogy to spoof, he noted, today’s landscape offers a “never-ending fount” of targets.
Mel Brooks himself, now 99, appeared only through a recorded video message, thanking the audience for keeping the original film alive for decades. He also passed along a piece of advice to Greenbaum before filming began: remember to say “Action!” before “Cut!” The panel closed with a tongue-in-cheek reveal of a fake “Spaceballs Cinematic Universe,” poking fun at how studios like Marvel map out years of sequels, with made-up entries stretching all the way to 2044.
Spaceballs: The New One arrives in theatres on April 23, 2027. Between Moranis’s return, Brooks’s continued involvement, and a cast spanning multiple generations of the franchise, the sequel is already generating the kind of anticipation few Comic-Con panels manage to produce.
Read More:
- Spotlight: Making Injustice Heard in a World of Untouchable Power
- Harry Potter and the Question Every Reboot Must Answer
- Good Films Are Often Bad Experiences
- Top 10 Sequels That Elevated Cinema: When Hollywood Got Better the Second Time
- How much does responsibility seep into filmmaking? Or does it at all?
