Rick Moranis has returned to live-action filmmaking after nearly 30 years away, reprising his role as Lord Dark Helmet in Spaceballs 2: The New One — and he says the experience was a "time warp" that took some getting used to.

Speaking at Comic-Con, Moranis told the audience that stepping back in front of the camera felt "very strange" at first, but that it eventually "started to feel really good," Variety reported. The remarks were also carried by People magazine.

Moranis's last live-action feature film role came in the 1997 comedy sequel Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, Variety noted. In the years since, he voiced characters in two Brother Bear films in the mid-2000s and co-created the Canadian animated sitcom Bob & Doug, which ran for two seasons. Otherwise, one of the most recognisable comic actors of the 1980s and early 1990s effectively walked away from the screen.

The new film reunites Moranis with the original Spaceballs cast: Mel Brooks returns as Yogurt, Bill Pullman as Lone Starr, Daphne Zuniga as Princess Vespa, and George Wyner as Colonel Sandurz, Variety reported. Brooks, now 99, directed the 1987 original — a broad spoof of Star Wars and the space-opera genre — and has been the franchise's creative shepherd throughout.

Newcomers to the franchise include Josh Gad, Keke Palmer, Lewis Pullman, and Anthony Carrigan, Variety reported. Their roles have not yet been disclosed. Gad co-wrote the screenplay with Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez, the writing duo whose credits include Detective Pikachu and Addams Family 2. Josh Greenbaum, who directed the 2024 road-trip documentary Will & Harper, is directing the sequel.

Amazon MGM Studios is producing and distributing the film, the company confirmed on its corporate news site in September 2025, when it officially announced Moranis's return (aboutamazon.com). Moranis arrived in Australia in October 2025 to begin filming, Entertainment Tonight reported at the time.

Spaceballs: The New One is scheduled for theatrical release on 23 April 2027.

For fans who grew up quoting Dark Helmet's scenes — the oversized helmet, the intersecting phone calls, the exasperated demands of subordinates — the Comic-Con panel offered the first public confirmation that the return is real and not another rumour that has circled Moranis for decades. His withdrawal from acting was never dramatic; he simply chose family and a quieter life after his wife's death in 1991. That restraint has only made the appetite for his return louder.

Whether the sequel can match the cult status of the original is a question for the review pages. What is certain is the calibre of the reunion: nearly the full surviving principal cast, a writer-director team with recent comedy credentials, and a star who waited three decades to put the helmet back on.