Yahoo Lifestyle Josh Gad had to explain new “Star Wars” movies to Mel Brooks while pitching “Spaceballs” sequel
The actor says he felt like "a combat vet just going to war in front of one person."
Kevin Mazur/Getty; MGM/ Courtesy: Everett
Josh Gad; Mel Brooks in 'Spaceballs'It's been a long time since Spaceballs first parodied Star Wars, but a sequel to Mel Brooks' sci-fi satire has plenty of new material to work with. In a rereleased episode of Let's Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa, Josh Gad gave updates on the Spaceballs sequel he's developing — a process that included explaining recent Star Wars movies to the 98-year-old Brooks.
When Spaceballs first hit theaters in 1987, Brooks had his comedic sights set on George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy, which had concluded just a few years earlier. The decades since then have produced eight additional Star Wars movies (comprising a prequel trilogy, a sequel trilogy, and multiple one-offs) and several TV shows. So when Gad pitched Brooks his ideas for a sequel, he had a lot of additional explaining to do.
"Mel is incredibly involved. I'll share a funny story that I haven't yet shared," Gad told Ripa. "When we were pitching him the original conceit for what we wanted to do with the film, at the beginning he goes, 'I'm just telling you now, I want you to really go into detail because I I don't know a lot about the new Star Wars films.' And I said, 'okay.'"
Gad continued, "so I pitch for 40 minutes. It's literally like, I am a combat vet just going to war in front of one person. I'm sweating, I am getting into every line and every beat and every comedic set piece, every reveal. I'm painting all of it and I'm speaking to how this speaks to a certain Star Wars moment, etc. Then there's silence and at the end of it, he goes, 'wow. Josh, it really sounds like you've got your finger on the pulse!' That is the greatest compliment I could have ever gotten, even though there's no context for it for Mel. He really just trusted everything I had to say."
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Gad wrote the Spaceballs sequel script with Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit. He told Ripa that the movie is "a love letter to not only Spaceballs, but to all things Mel Brooks" but didn't divulge any more details lest he "get shot by Amazon Space Force." But from this description, we can guess that the movie might parody the "legacy sequel" format popularized by 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Since original cast members John Candy and Joan Rivers have died, a Spaceballs sequel would probably have to get creative with casting as well (and perhaps even parody Carrie Fisher's posthumous performance in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker). In November, Gad revealed to Forbes that he and his co-writers completed the draft of the script and "everybody who’s read it has been blown away."
"The process of working on this with and alongside Mel Brooks has been one of the highlights of my career," he told the publication.
If it comes to fruition, the Spaceballs sequel won't be the first follow-up to a beloved Brooks project in recent years. In 2023, Hulu released History of the World: Part II as a sketch comedy miniseries. Created by Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes, and Ike Barinholtz, the series was a follow-up to Brooks' 1981 film and featured the comedy legend as the narrator.
Related: Star Wars rewatch: The Force Awakens misses its own sharp points
"What we really wanted to honor was, Mel had some incredibly astute social commentary, but he was never preachy," Kroll told Entertainment Weekly in 2023. "He was always pretty silly. And it's always funny first, and we really tried to take that ethos and bring it with us in the show...that was always kind of the North Star."
Listen to the full discussion below on Let's Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa.
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