One of Comic-Con’s loudest moments went to a man hiding in the crowd under an extra large helmet. On Friday (July 24), a crowd in Hall H stood and cheered as Rick Moranis, 73, joined the panel for Spaceballs: The New One, the long-awaited sequel to Mel Brooks’s 1987 sci-fi spoof, per the Associated Press. When his name was first announced, soldiers from the film combed the audience with an oversized comb to find him, a nod to the original’s most famous gag.
Moranis, who last appeared in a live-action film in 1997’s Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, returns as Dark Helmet. The film is due next April. He told the crowd the timing worked. “This came along at the right time,” he said. “It just felt like this is it. … It is the best decision I ever made. It’s like family to me.”
I wasn’t retired, I was just negotiating.
Rick Moranis, Empire
He also had a line for why he finally said yes, Empire reports: “It was the only way I could get Josh Gad to stop texting me.”
What else the panel showed
The cast onstage included returning Princess Vespa actress Daphne Zuniga, director Josh Greenbaum, Gad (who is behind the sequel), writers Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit, and new additions Lewis Pullman and Keke Palmer. Mel Brooks and Bill Pullman, Lewis’s father, appeared by prerecorded video, and fans saw behind-the-scenes footage of Brooks recording lines and a teaser. Gad said he would play a mawg, though not John Candy’s Barf, and that the film would honor original cast members who have died, including Candy, Joan Rivers, Dom DeLuise and Dick Van Patten.
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The team also spoofed Marvel’s cinematic-universe timelines with a graphic on Hall H’s screens showing an imagined run of more than 11 phases of “The Almighty Schwartz Saga.”
Why it matters
Comic-Con this year has been a comeback story. Empire noted that Johnny Depp’s surprise Scrooge appearance the day before drew confused reactions, while Moranis’s return raised the roof. He left the industry in 1997 after the death of his wife, and he has done mostly voice work since, per Rolling Stone.
Palmer’s week was a big one. The day before, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce named her to the Hollywood Walk of Fame class of 2027, alongside Lil Wayne, Karol G and Linkin Park. For a different kind of crowd moment that month, see Pitbull’s bald-cap record in Hyde Park.
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
