At long last, Mel Brooks’ cult comedy spoof Spaceballs is getting a sequel. After teases as far back as the original film’s release, with the joke about Spaceballs II: The Search for More Moneythe second Spaceballs comes out in summer 2027, the original’s 40th anniversary. And bless his heart, 98-year-old Mel Brooks will return as Yogurt, his Yoda spoof character from the original. The announcement video was rather hilarious, skewering our endless franchise culture, reminding us “there’s only ever been one Spaceballs.” But as Slashfilm pointed out, that’s not entirely true. Back in 2008, Spaceballs: The Animated Series was a one-season-wonder. And you probably didn’t even know it existed. The show did have a catchy title tune, which was written by Mel Brooks, which you can listen to here.
Only 13 episodes of Spaceballs ever aired, and the whole thing was a rather low-budget affair, produced in a flash animation style. It originally aired on G4, the now-defunct digital network. Spaceballs: The Animated Series reunited a lot of the original cast, including Daphne Zuniga, Joan Rivers, and Dom DeLuise. Bill Pullman was already a big star at this point, so he didn’t come back to play Lone Starr. Replaced him was The Batman’s Rino Romano. John Candy had long since passed away at this point, and so Tino Insana played Barf. The Clone Wars‘ Dee Bradley Baker replaced Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet. This gives the animated Spaceballs at least one real connection to the actual Star Wars franchise.
The show leaned heavily into the “let’s just reference something popular” humor of the day found in movies like Not Another Teen Movie, Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie, and the incredibly bad Meet the Spartans. Remember those atrocities? Well, Spaceballs: The Animated Series dipped its toe into those waters. The reason the original Spaceballs holds up is that the references to classic Star Wars films remain relevant and funny. We imagine the script for Spaceballs II is better than the animated show, since comedy legend Rick Moranis came out of retirement for it. He couldn’t be bothered to do voice work for the cartoon. In the end, Spaceballs: The Animated Series is the perfect guidebook for Spaceballs II director Josh Greenbaum on what not to do.
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