Amazon's new sci-fi announcement is one I never expected, but definitely welcome

Well, for sci-fi fans of a certain generation, it doesn't get much bigger than this. Sure, it's nice to see massive high-budget adaptations of the Dune books, and the enormous success of standalone sci-fi movies like Project Hail Mary, but for people over 40 there's nothing quite like Spaceballs, which parodied the whole genre but took particular aim at Star Wars.

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Now, in what's come as a bit of a surprise to me, at least, it turns out we're getting another movie, with central involvement from the literally 99-year-old Mel Brooks, who seems to be in fine form in the announcement video that Amazon posted today. It confirms that Spaceballs: The New One will hit cinemas in April next year, and as an Amazon MGM Studios production, it'll almost certainly go to Prime Video swiftly afterwards.

We don't have a trailer to watch at this point, but we do have a charming little announcement video featuring Brooks explaining that the movie is a result of fans badgering him for decades at this point.

Spaceballs: The New One - YouTube

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The video also addresses the one big asterisk attached to the project – its title. After all, one of the most famous jokes in the original Spaceballs was about a supposedly inevitable cash-hungry sequel, called Spaceballs: The Search for More Money. Brooks acknowledges this but brushes it off by confirming that he already found the money to make the new movie, even literally pointing it out.

It's a funny situation, really. Amazon clearly didn't quite have the cojones to make a joke about this decades-later sequel ultimately being an attempt to wring some money out of a quite long-dead joke, and that's ultimately a shame. If it had stuck with that original title, we would have all been able to enjoy the punchline to a joke set up nearly 40 years ago, which would have been remarkable.

Still, The New One is funny enough as a name in isolation, and with Brooks on board, you'd hope there will be plenty of silly and slapstick fun in the movie itself. We don't really know much more about it, though, since the release date is a year away (23 April 2027) and Amazon hasn't announced a cast or characters.

Most of the actors from the original are presumably now too old to appear again, and some of them have passed away, so it's a safe enough bet that we'll get some newcomers, but my biggest interest will be around which franchises it aims to skewer.

Had the movie come out even five years ago, the world was much more suffused in Star Wars movies and shows, but things have slowed down now, and the Skywalker Saga has been over for a while. Is this the best time to take shots at a semi-dormant mega-franchise? Maybe the Mandalorian movie will change that, and Brooks' timing will end up being perfect – we won't know for a good while yet.