Mel Brooks Gets Most of the Original Cast For 'Spaceballs' Sequel - Is that a Good Thing?

According to Deadline, Bill Pullman and Rick Moranis are returning as Lone Starr and Dark Helmet, respectively, in a new Spaceballs movie from Amazon MGM Studios. Keke Palmer (One of Them Days) is also joining the cast.

No word yet on Daphne Zuniga.

Josh Greenbaum (Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar) will direct from a script by Benji Samit, Dan Hernandez, and Josh Gad.

Gad has said of the script, "Mel is incredibly involved. I’ll share a funny story that I haven’t yet shared. When we were pitching him the original conceit for what we wanted to do with the film, at the beginning, he goes, 'I’m just telling you now, I want you to really go into detail because I don’t know a lot about the new Star Wars films.' And I said, 'Okay.' It’s literally like, I am a combat vet, just going to war in front of one person. I’m sweating, I am getting into every line and every beat and every comedic set piece, every reveal. I’m painting all of it, and I’m speaking to how this speaks to a certain Star Wars moment."

Mel Brooks will also return, as Yogurt, according to the new teaser he just dropped.

The Original Cast Returns - Is That a Good Thing?

It's always exciting to have a sequel to a movie you love, but this movie is almost 40 years old, and having all the primary cast members, RIP John Candy, back is an interesting choice.

If I were betting, I think it would be cameo roles for them all and a new adventure they may want to spin-off into even more movies if this one did well.

Mostly because while I have serious nostalgia for the original movie, both Pullman and Moranis are in their 70s, and Brooks is in his 90s. There are a lot of jokes to mine there, but maybe this all revolves around passing the torch to Keke Palmer.

We've seen legacy sequels like the newest Star Wars trilogy try to do a soft handoff to new characters, but in a comedy, this hasn't happened really, outside of the new Shaft movie, which was really more of an action movie.

In the summer, when people are tracking the Naked Gun reboot, I think this movie will probably try to hit the same market, and bringing the old cast back can get older fans, who now might have their own kids and grandkids to bring and introduce to the new cast.

The original film grossed only a little over $38.1 million worldwide but became a cult classic. Hopefully, this sequel finds its own success.

It would be nice to have comedy back.

Summing It All Up

Bringing back the old cast is always fun, but you can't be sure if it's good business until the box office rolls in.

Still, there's so much to mine in the comedy space as the Star Wars movie got reboots, and there have even been more alien movies since then as well.

Hopefully, this new one lives up to its predecessor.

Let me know what you think in the comments.