Spaceballs: The Clickbait: Rick Moranis’ Return at Comic-Con – Esquire Singapore
Spaceballs: The Clickbait: Rick Moranis’ Return at Comic-Con
Moranis gets lost and found, Mel Brooks stays mint-in-the-box, and Josh Gad IS Ebenezer
BY
Anthony Breznican
Published: 31 July 2026
Uh-oh. Rick Moranis is missing.
It is the night before the Spaceballs sequel panel at San Diego Comic-Con, and the beloved 73-year-old actor—who hasn’t appeared onscreen in a movie for nearly 30 years—is preparing for his long-awaited comeback. When the sequel, subtitled The New One, debuts in April 2027, Moranis will reprise his role as the haughty, dastardly Dark Helmet, a Darth Vader wannabe who first menaced the screen in Mel Brooks’s now-classic 1987 Star Wars spoof. At Comic-Con, the world is finally going to meet him again, for the first time, for the last time. Or something like that.
Except, there’s a problem. “Serious question. Does anyone know where Rick is?” announces Bianca Espirito-Santo Swartz (more on that coincidental last name later), who is the producer of the live event. For the last hour, she has been wrangling the actors, comedians, writers, and producers onto the Comic-Con stage to practise the beats of the presentation. She stands on the platform at the head of the room with a giant version of her looming on the screen behind her, very Citizen Kane-like. The mic booms her voice out over the 6,500 mostly empty seats of Hall H, and the clock ticks toward 10pm, when they’ll have to clear out for the next Q&A’s walk-through.
Josh Gad, the tirelessly driving force behind the Spaceballs resurgence, sits onstage behind her, momentarily looking as nervous as his Frozen alter ego Olaf under a hamburger lamp. Did they really just lose the legend he spent years recruiting back to the screen? At stake in this Comic-Con event is the future of the Spaceballs extended universe, the “Almighty Schwartz Saga,” an 11-phase, century-long series of movies, TV shows, and spin-offs. (Sure, that seems like only a joke, but so did the idea of a movie about sterile backrooms until it made a gajillion dollars.)
Next to Gad onstage sits Spaceballs 2 director Josh Greenbaum, the filmmaker behind Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, the R-rated talking-animal comedy Strays, and the upcoming tennis comedy The Dink. He appears less concerned about the disappearance of Moranis, like a weary parent who can no longer hear his own child screaming on the aeroplane. At the other end of the row of seats, co-writers Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez—who are sometimes referred to with the singular hybrid nickname “Danji”—exchange identical “I didn’t do it” expressions.
There is an empty chair for Moranis next to Keke Palmer, who stars as Destiny, a new character in the sequel, and Daphne Zuniga, who returns as the Leia parody Princess Vespa—now promoted to Queen Vespa. Both women sit quietly, glancing side to side as tensions momentarily rise and The Search for Rick begins.
Swartz had to preface her announcement with “serious question” because Moranis was last seen when they rehearsed a bit for the opening of the panel where he actually goes missing.
One of the last people to speak with Moranis before he vanished was… me. I walked with him as he explained the joke they were putting together. “I’m told that I’m going to be placed in the audience. They’re going to introduce me and I’m not going to come out and they’re going to have to ‘comb’ the audience looking for me,” he said.
The plan was for Moranis to hide in plain sight, tucked in among the costumed attendees beneath his character’s oversized headgear. “I’m not in full costume, just whatever I’m wearing with the helmet. The dark helmet. The big thing,” Moranis tells me, holding his hands about two feet from either side of his head.
But as the joke unfolds there will actually be several Dark Helmets in the vicinity. “They first find one guy that’s not me,” Moranis said. “Then a second one. The old comedy rules are three,” he says. “And the third one would be me. Then they’ll take me up to the stage.”
The only problem is, to maintain the surprise he will need to already be under the closed face of the Dark Helmet when he secretly emerges from backstage, and then he would have to spend the entire opening sequence beneath it. He explains that there’s a bit of a sensory deprivation that comes from wearing that thing.
“It’s a cone of silence,” Moranis says with a shrug. Those may be famous last words.
Here’s where I should pause to explain that the team behind Spaceballs 2 brought Esquire here to exclusively accompany them behind the scenes of the now-viral Comic-Con presentation, getting up close as they put it all together. This was, obviously, a huge mistake, because here we are: betraying them by revealing the one thing that went awry during the rehearsal. Typical clickbait-chasing media.
Spaceballs: The Rehearsal started on Thursday at a private cast and crew gathering at Morton’s steakhouse in San Diego’s Gaslamp District, the bustling home of Comic-Con that is overrun annually with thousands of costumed revellers and pop culture fanatics.
As I walk to the restaurant, I pass a pair of Trons, several He-Men and Skeletors, assorted Jokers, a flock of lightsaber-wielders, and the Scrooge & Marley pop-up shopfront where Johnny Depp had just appeared in old-man make-up and a top hat to convince other Johnny Depps to see his new Christmas movie Ebenezer.
Inside Morton’s, I am taken to a closed-door event where a screen welcomes the group of about 50 cast and crew members to Spaceballs: The Dinner. Everyone taking part in the panel is present except Moranis, who is meeting them at the convention centre later. Lewis Pullman, who is playing the son of Lone Starr (originated by his actual father, Bill Pullman), will arrive in San Diego the next day.
The rehearsal meal includes a themed menu and cocktail list, seen below. One of the libations, Spacebitch, takes its name either from Carrie Fisher’s infamous quote about Star Wars fans who thought Princess Leia was too tough, or an allusion to a female Mawg, the Chewbacca-like half-human, half-canine creatures who inhabit the Spaceballs universe.
Gad is playing one of these creatures, although he emphasises that he is not taking on the role of Barf, played in the first film by the late and much-missed John Candy. They aren’t saying more about the character, hoping to conjure the same kind of mystery that Marvel Studios generated around a certain Stranger Things actress and her still-uncertain role in the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
“We’re intentionally keeping it cryptic,” Gad says. “I’m the Sadie Sink of this movie.”
One of the first things Gad does when I arrive is explain his moustache, which suggests something in between Park Slope hipster and international diamond smuggler. “It’s for the new Ocean’s Eleven prequel,” he tells me with a shrug. “Every time I meet somebody I feel like I need to apologise.”
“I think you should tell people it’s for Frozen 3 and just let them wonder why you had to change your look for an animated film,” says Spaceballs 2 director Greenbaum.
Gad runs with that idea: “I have to do it! They say it affects my voice,” he deadpans. “It really brings out the honesty when I say, ‘I like warm hugs.’”
As we all head off toward Hall H for the onstage rehearsal, co-writers Samit and Hernandez pile into the van with Gad, Greenbaum and Spaceballs 2 costume designer Trayce Gigi Field, who is there to supervise the dressing of the Spaceballs soldiers and the Dark Helmet apparatus for the planned Moranis introduction. Christine Batista, the co-head of Amazon/MGM’s global movies PR department, takes a moment to introduce me to the crowd. “Remember, he is a journalist, so what happens on this bus…”
“Doesn’t stay on this bus,” Samit finishes. “What’s the code word for ‘off the record?’” Hernandez asks.
“On the record: I love Josh Gad. Off the record: Not a fan,” Greenbaum says. “Off the record: I have still never seen the first Spaceballs. On the record: I’ve seen it a thousand times.”
“Serious question. Does anyone know where Rick is?”
Only two members of the core Spaceballs 2 cast are unable to attend the Comic-Con showcase. Bill Pullman is currently performing onstage in England in a production of The Cherry Orchard, although he sent a video message outside the Swan Theatre to the Hall H audience.
The other missing piece is Mel Brooks himself. Serious consideration was given to bringing Brooks to Comic-Con, but given that he just turned 100 years old on 28 June, the Spaceballs 2 team decided not to risk transporting him to San Diego and subjecting him to the onslaught of the world’s biggest fantasy convention.
They were equally careful with the comedy legend throughout the production. While Brooks does reprise his Yoda-like role of Yoghurt in the upcoming sequel, he was only required to read the lines in a recording booth, not dive around on set in a laser-sword battle while wearing gold makeup. “Part of the idea was we didn’t want to kill a 99-year-old man. We really felt that was important,” Gad says.
There were a lot of chaperones at this particular prom, to make sure things don’t go off the rails too far. “I’m the Josh Gad wrangler,” jokes Jeb Brody, a producer on the film and head of film and TV at Imagine Entertainment. “My entire job is just to make sure he gets nothing he wants.”
When we arrive at the loading dock behind Hall H, we’re greeted by Kevin Salter, who serves as Brooks’ eyes and ears on the production. He has been Brooks’s longtime consigliere and producing partner at Brooksfilms Ltd. and keeps the centenarian filled in on the event’s progress. (Brooks likes to stay up all night and sleep during the day, he says.)
Brooks himself was eager to venture down to Comic-Con, Salter says, but had to be talked out of it. “You know, he doesn’t love being 100, but who does?” Salter says. “What I tell him is, ‘The alternative is… not being 100.”
It’s up to those around Brooks to keep this one-of-a-kind safe in his bubble, like a vintage, unopened Star Wars action figure. “We want to take care of him,” Salter says. “He’s a living legend. It’s like our job to say, ‘Hmm, maybe not.’ We want him on the red carpet [when the movie opens] in April.”
Also waiting on the Hall H loading dock when the gang arrives from dinner around 9:20pm is a man in a blue zip-up sweatshirt, khaki pants, and a grey cap. Rick Moranis has just flown in from his home in New York, and as Gad, Greenbaum, Samit, and Hernandez swarm him, he smiles like a mild-mannered uncle who has been recruited to join his nephews for an all-night road trip to Vegas.
“Are you exhausted?” Gad asks.
“This is well past your bedtime,” Greenbaum adds.
“Well, it is the middle of the night for me,” Moranis says. But he’s here. He’s game. It’s time to get started.
As the gang moves inside to the cavernous and largely empty Hall H, Daphne Zuniga halts in her heels. “Oh my God… What!?” the Queen Vespa actress says. “I’ve never been to this kind of thing before. Unbelievable.”
The group is met by Bianca Espirito-Santo Swartz, a veteran producer of live events who coordinated several Hall H presentations this year. She points out that there might be a cosmic coincidence at play: In Star Wars, the unseen presence that guides all life is called The Force, but in Spaceballs this supernatural entity is called The Schwartz.
The producer explains that her last name is actually spelt S-W-A-R-T-Z. “But then somebody messed up my credential and gave me a C-H. So The Schwartz is with us,” she says. Minutes later, she’s rallying the whole group: “…We’re starting? Okay!”
Swartz outlines the opening revelation for Moranis. He gets beneath his huge mask and takes his seat, and the team walks through the rehearsal as Spaceballs soldiers literally comb the crowd with giant ACE combs in a callback to one of the first movie’s most famous gags. They find the first Dark Helmet doppelgänger—a bearded man with crossed eyes, then they hit upon the second, which turns out to be a young boy. (It’s actually Swartz’s teenage son, Lincoln, who won the part when he demonstrated a charismatic eyebrow arch he could do when the mask flipped up.)
“I was thinking about how this movie is multi-generational. Dads are going to want to bring their sons,” Swartz says. “So I had the helmet, and I was like, ‘Dude, put this on. Let’s see what happens.’ Then he gave me the eyebrow when he lifted it up and I was like, this is basically bring-your-son-to-work, right? So then I pitched it like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. There’s a little shrunken Rick, maybe.”
“Part of the idea was we didn’t want to kill a 99-year-old man. We really felt that was important.”
As they walk through the revelation of Moranis, Swartz has to repeatedly advise the Spaceballers that they are combing too slowly. “It’s not a wedding march,” she says.
Samit walks with Gad to the stage and says Rick asked for a funny line to say when his mask flips up. He proposes that Moranis say he was reluctant to leave his chair after waiting in the 12-hour-plus line that most audience members must endure to get into Hall H.
As the team of Spaceballs combers reach Moranis, he flips up his mask and gestures at the other Dark Helmets: “Arrest those imposters!” From the stage, his co-stars ask him why he’s hiding out in the audience. “Do you know how long I waited for this seat?” he answers.
The rest of the cast arrays onstage, and several minutes pass as Swartz plays the role of moderator Kevin Smith, presenting the various videos and questions that will unspool during the presentation. As they near the rehearsal deadline of 10pm, she realises: Moranis is missing.
As Swartz calls out looking for him, the behind-the-scenes crew begins combing Hall H for real. That’s when the soft-spoken Moranis steps out from behind the black curtain that conceals one of the backstage doors. He thought they were going to rehearse his revelation one more time, and was waiting for someone to tell him where to go.
According to my audio recording, exactly three minutes and two seconds had passed from when he said his line and charged off behind the curtain. Moranis was missing for about the runtime of Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” although maybe those three minutes felt amplified by the three decades we’ve lived without him.
Okay, so he wasn’t really lost for long. But this story needed some drama, so I leaned into it. Like I said, you can’t really trust the media. I warned you this was clickbait from the start.
The next afternoon, it’s showtime. Friday is when Comic-Con kicks into high gear, and Hall H overflows with people. Thousands pack the room to capacity, making the once cavernous-seeming space seem claustrophobic.
Moranis was introspective on the ride from the hotel to the convention centre. “After not doing it for as many years as I have, and therefore living as a civilian and really connecting with the audience as people… it’s really moving to me to see them again,” he says.
Greenbaum sat beside him in the back of the van, offering reassurance that they are going to love seeing him. “It’s a lot better than disappointing them!” Moranis says.
When we get to the convention centre, everyone piles out of the vehicle—except for Moranis, who lingers in the back seat alone. “All right, good luck everybody. I’ll just be in here!” he calls out.
“Our bit is actually real,” Greenbaum jokes. “We’ll be like, ‘He’s still in the van!’”
As the Spaceballs 2 group assembles in the Comic-Con greenroom above Hall H, Gad reveals he has only one regret: not capitalising on Comic-Con’s most perplexingly viral moment: Johnny Depp’s Scrooge antics. “I begged them to let me come out as Ebenezer,” Gad tells me. “Can you imagine? The hair, the hat…” he says, stooping over and squinting as he gnashes his teeth. “Just walking around muttering, ‘Bah, humbug!’”
One obstacle to hijacking Ebenezer for the Spaceballs 2 panel was simply finding a makeup artist on short notice who could spoof Depp’s look. Then there was the risk of distracting from their actual purpose here at Comic-Con: hyping their own movie. Jeb Brody, the self-proclaimed “Josh Gad wrangler,” strikes again—presumably with other Spaceballs stakeholders who talked the star out of it.
Even in this holding area, Moranis is already getting a sense of the excitement building around him. Among the first people to have their socks knocked off is Clerks and Mallrats filmmaker Kevin Smith, the moderator of the presentation and a Comic-Con stalwart for decades. “I came for the panel because of Rick Moranis,” he tells me, invoking the name of the actor’s beer-swilling duo with Dave Thomas from their SCTV days. “Jay and Silent Bob doesn’t exist without Bob and Doug McKenzie. Having him at Comic-Con is like having geek royalty here. You’re talking about a dude who, for most of us, was there as we grew up. He was part of the fabric of the culture since we were kids.”
And then Moranis went away, stepping back from acting after 1996 to raise his two children. He decided to take a break and focus on his young son and daughter after his wife, make-up artist Ann Belsky, passed away from cancer in 1991. He has always said that his intended hiatus just became a longer and longer break. He still recorded some music and occasionally did voice acting performances, but another onscreen role never happened. “Going away is completely understandable,” Smith says. “He wanted to live a real life. But him coming back is a thing to celebrate. It’s crazy that I get to be there for a moment when he jumps up on stage.”
Finally, it’s time. The Spaceballs 2 team all sit at a roundtable to walk through the presentation with Swartz one last time before descending to the dark backstage area. In the elevator, a 13-year-old boy (my son) asks Moranis: “Are you nervous?” The question makes me nervous: Don’t make this legend uncertain now, kid.
But Moranis considers it and responds kindly. “You know, I just don’t think about it that way,” he says, before adding reassuringly: “But it’s a good question.”
Then it happened: Spaceballs—The Comic-Con Panel. By now, the videos have gone viral, the photos have circulated everywhere, and those who are longing for the return of Rick Moranis and Mel Brooks are assured that this movie will bring us heavy-duty doses of both.
The reaction from the Hall H crowd when Moranis flipped up his mask was so deafening that it drowned out his cry of “Arrest those imposters!” The cheers remained so loud and sustained that he abandoned his planned joke and just darted back behind the curtain to reemerge with his castmates onstage.
When the panel concluded, there was still more to do. Gad and the gang were heading to a signing area to meet with fans and dole out autographs. But the heavy lifting of the presentation was done. I ran into Jeb Brody in the greenroom and asked for his thoughts on how it turned out. “Disaster,” he said. “It makes me feel like we made a big mistake.”
(No one associated with Spaceballs 2 is permitted to give a serious answer until first delivering a joke answer.) “No, I thought it was beautiful,” Brody added.”I thought the audience was completely connected, not only to Mel but all of the reasons this movie has been hanging around in people’s psyches. Today was about letting people know that’s what we’re doing. We’re poking fun at nostalgia.”
With Moranis’ comeback, he adds, they’re also embracing nostalgia, and giving people back a performer that they’ve missed for a long, long time. “Part of this was to make sure that Rick knew we weren’t the only people who love him,” Brody says. “We wanted that moment at Comic-Con. We’ve been talking about it forever: Rick walking in and feeling the house come down and embrace him for all that he gave them.”
He said the actor is too humble to realise what he means to people. “I think he’s learning it,” Brody says. “But he doesn’t want to be an icon. He doesn’t want to be a hero. My sense is he wants to be funny. He wanted to be a normal person. And he wants to tell good jokes and make good work.”
Afterwards, as we walked away from the backstage area, leaving Hall H behind, I asked Moranis how he felt after that outpouring at Comic-Con. Moranis shook his head, and his gentle smile once again emerged. All he said was: “I don’t know what planet I’m on.”
