Amazon MGM Studios turned San Diego’s Hall H into a punchline Friday, unveiling “Spaceballs: The New One” with a presentation that mocked the very studio machinery it now belongs to. The panel echoed the sprawling opening tracking shot from the 1987 original, which lampooned “Star Wars,” by opening its Comic-Con showcase with 180-degree wraparound screens borrowed from last year’s “Project Hail Mary” presentation.
What followed was a direct parody of Marvel’s own Hall H playbook. Screens flashed a mock “Spaceballs Cinematic Universe” timeline stretched across eleven phases, complete with fake musicals and nonsensical release windows, a jab at the phase-based rollouts Marvel unveiled in 2019 and 2022.
The biggest moment belonged to Rick Moranis. Soldiers in astronaut suits combed the Hall H crowd searching for Dark Helmet, only to pull the actor himself from the audience, where he’d been hiding under his character’s oversized helmet. The room broke into a chant of his name as he climbed onstage for his first-ever Comic-Con appearance. Moranis, 73 and largely absent from Hollywood for decades, called the project “the best decision I ever made,” adding that it “felt like family”.
Director Josh Greenbaum led a stage packed with returning and new talent. Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga and George Wyner are back from the original cast, joined by newcomers Josh Gad, Keke Palmer, Lewis Pullman and Anthony Carrigan. Mel Brooks, now over a century old, skipped the trip in person.
He appeared instead in a video message, joking that he was busy hunting down a rare Charizard card on the convention floor and thanking the crowd from what he called the bottom of his heart. Gad, also a producer and writer on the film, recalled the sequel’s origins tracing back to a scrapped “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” follow-up he’d once developed with Moranis.
Kevin Smith moderated the session, keeping things loose as the cast traded jokes about the franchise’s absurd longevity. The teaser footage shown largely mirrored what had already screened at CinemaCon months earlier, offering little new beyond the theatrics. Amazon MGM has set the film for release on April 23, 2027.
