mgm-studios" rel="tag">Amazon MGM Studios unveiled the official title of its Spaceballs sequel at CinemaCon on Wednesday, confirming that the film will be called Spaceballs: The New One and will open in theaters on April 23, 2027. The reveal came with a new round of jokes, old faces and one very pointed reminder that Rick Moranis is back on screen for the first time in many years.
Mel Brooks could not make the presentation because he was seeing Phish at the Sphere, but the show went on without him. Moranis appeared in a pre-taped segment before Josh Gad interrupted him, while Keke Palmer also turned up in another pre-tape. On stage in Las Vegas, Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga, Josh Gad and Lewis Pullman all appeared to tout the sequel, giving the crowd a live reunion that mixed nostalgia with new cast members.
Greenbaum, who directed the sequel from a script by Gad, Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez, called it the honor of a lifetime to make a sequel to a comedic masterpiece. Bill Pullman said he was thrilled to collaborate with Gad, while Lewis Pullman joked that booking the film was pretty rigorous and took years, starting with his birth. Zuniga said she would be very happy to return if Amazon provided a giant trailer, massive per diem, personal driver, Michelin-star chef and a walk-in closet for her luggage.
The preview footage leaned hard into the joke that the project could only exist because fate intervened while Hollywood studios were merging willy-nilly. A voiceover promised a universe filled with heroes and villains where the fate of the galaxy rests in the hands of the few. The footage showed Brooks in Yoda makeup, a Na’vi from the Avatar films standing beside Dark Helmet at a urinal, and a promise that the movie would one day be used as a write-off. Dark Helmet himself bragged that he had always dreamed of stealing the air from Druidia and opening wide domestically on 4800 screens.
Plot details for Spaceballs: The New One remain under wraps, and the studio has already played with the film’s absurdist branding, previously describing it as a Non-Prequel Non-Reboot Sequel Part Two but with Reboot Elements Franchise Expansion Film. What is clear is the lineup: Gad stars alongside Palmer, Lewis Pullman and Anthony Carrigan, while returning cast members include Brooks as Yogurt, Moranis as Dark Helmet, Bill Pullman as Lone Starr, Zuniga as Princess Vespa and George Wyner as Colonel Sandurz. The sequel was produced by Brian Grazer, Jeb Brody, Brooks, Gad, Greenbaum and Kevin Salter, with Adam Merims, Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez as executive producers.
For a film built on the memory of an iconic send-up first released by MGM in 1987, the new title is the point. The joke is that the sequel has arrived as itself, with enough of the original cast to make the return feel real and enough absurdity to make plain that spaceballs 2 is still refusing to behave like a normal studio sequel. The answer to the question the title raises is simple: it is real, it is dated, and it is already leaning into the joke before audiences ever see a frame.
