Spaceballs Gets Animated This Fall

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the hugely popular sci-fi movie Star Wars. Fans have been worshiping this movie and the films that followed for three decades and this fall, there will be even more Star Wars goodness to come on the small screen. Family Guy is set to parody the popular Sci-fi films in the premiere episode this fall and now the original Star Wars parody, Spaceballs is about to go animated, start with a 13-episode season, which will air on G4 sometime “soon.”

Information about this new animated series has been trickling in since January of 2005 when Variety ran a story stating that Mel Brooks (the filmmaking mastermind behind Spaceballs), MGM and a small German company called Berliner Film Co. were teaming up to put the series together. Brooks was busy working on the Broadway production of “The Producers” at the time, which caused a bit of a delay in the production of the Spaceballs cartoon.

The concept behind the animated series focuses not just on Star Wars parodies, but also spoofing other hugely popular sci-fi and fantasy films, like Lord of the Rings and according to a recent report by Moviehole.net, Harry Potter, The Terminator and Pirates of the Caribbean. Moviehole did say that the pilot episode of the series would center on the Spaceballs story. Information on the casting for this episode is limited to two roles as of right now. IMDB has Daphne Zuniga returning to the role of Princess Vespa and Brooks listed as the voice President Skroob.

Last fall, Animation World Network reported that the cable channel, G4 exclusively licensed the series for its first run. So we have the what and the where, now we just need the when. Unfortunately, with the exception of a brief flash-animated graphic on G4’s website, there really isn’t much to report in terms of when the show will premier. G4 says its “Coming Soon.” Since fall is nearly upon us, I’m assuming soon really does mean soon. In the meantime, you have some time to figure out whether or not your cable or satellite provider offers the G4 channel.

On a personal note, I haven’t watched Spaceballs the movie in years. Its one of the films I ruined for myself as a kid by watching it so many times that I knew it word for word and all of the humor was eventually sucked out of it, Mega Maid-style. While I love Star Wars, I’m more excited to see how they spoof some of the other blockbuster hits of the genre.