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It’s official: Rick Moranis is returning to acting for a very goofy trip through space.
On Thursday, Sept. 25, Amazon MGM Studios announced that Moranis, 72, will star in Mel Brooks and Josh Gad’s upcoming sequel to Brooks’ 1987 spoof comedy Spaceballs, reprising his role as the Darth Vader parody Dark Helmet.
The announcement comes more than three months after Deadline originally reported that Moranis would reprise his character in the movie, marking his first live-action project in nearly 30 years. The studio also confirmed previous reports that Bill Pullman, who played the Han Solo/Luke Skywalker parody character Lone Starr in the original movie, will appear in the new film, as will his son Lewis Pullman. The movie’s cast also includes Keke Palmer, Anthony Carrigan and Gad, 44, who cowrote the movie’s script and is producing alongside Brooks, 99, who was previously the movie’s only officially announced star.
Daphne Zuniga and George Wyner will also reprise their iconic roles as Princess Vespa and Colonel Sandurz in the sequel, while Gad, Palmer, the younger Pullman and Carrigan will portray brand-new characters. The studio also shared a photo from the film’s official table read with production officially underway.
Brook Rushton/Courtesy Amazon MGM Studios
Moranis stepped away from show business after his wife, costume designer Ann Belsky, died of breast cancer in 1991, to raise their two children, daughter Rachel and son Mitchell. Moranisn last appeared in a live-action role in 1997’s Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, though he has taken on several voice acting roles over the last two decades.
“I took a break, which turned into a longer break,” Moranis told The Hollywood Reporter of his acting hiatus back in 2015. “But I’m interested in anything that I would find interesting. I still get the occasional query about a film or television role, and as soon as one comes along that piques my interest.”
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Brooks, who directed and produced the original Spaceballs, officially announced the sequel in a video shared to X on June 12 alongside a Star Wars-type opening crawl screen and a caption that read, “I told you we’d be back.”
“After 40 years, we asked, ‘What do the fans want?’ But instead, we’re making this movie,” Brooks joked in the video, before the footage cut to key art depicting Dark Helmet. The movie will release in 2027.
