The first official trailer for Spaceballs: The New One debuted at CinemaCon on April 15, and it’s got the franchise’s original writer-director Mel Brooks all over it. In the sneak peek, fans get a glimpse of parodies of popular sci-fi and fantasy properties like Star Wars and Harry Potter. There’s even a moment where Na’vi from Avatar is at a urinal next to the quintessential Spaceballs chief enforcer Lord Dark Helmet. Other franchises that are expected to be parodied this time around include Star Trek and Alien.
Brooks, who is an incredible 99-years-old at this point, also sent a video to the convention in his absence, where he announced that the sequel’s official title will be Spaceballs: The New One.
As far as plot details, it appears the specifics are being kept under wraps at the moment, but there are certainly enough funny touchstone moments in the trailer to chew on. One thing we do know is some of the movie’s killer original cast will return, including Rick Moranis, George Wyner, Daphne Zuniga, Bill Pullman, and Brooks himself. There will, of course, be new folks joining the fray too, including Keke Palmer, Lewis Pullman, Anthony Carrigan, and one of the film’s writers, Josh Gad.
You might remember Brooks teased the project in June 2025 with one of the classic Star Wars-style text crawls. “Thirty-eight years ago, there was only one Star Wars trilogy,” it read. “But since then there have been… a prequel trilogy, a sequel trilogy, a sequel to the prequel, a prequel to the sequel, countless TV spinoffs, a movie spinoff of the TV spinoff, which is both a prequel and a sequel […] But in 38 years, there has only ever been one Spaceballs. Until now…”
The New One is directed by Josh Greenbaum and written by Gad, Dan Hernandez, and Benji Samit. Brooks also revealed the movie’s theatrical release date in the video: April 23, 2027.
The project will be released by Amazon MGM Studios, who also debuted footage from Masters of the Universe, Highlander with Henry Cavill, the Thomas Crown Affair starring Michael B. Jordan, Beekeeper 2 with Jason Statham, and How to Rob a Bank with Nicholas Hoult at CinemaCon. The studio also made a public commitment to put 15 movies in theaters per year, which they claim they are on track to hit in 2026.
Image credit: Greg Doherty/Getty Images for Amazon MGM Studios.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
