Every Mel Brooks Project That’s Been Rebooted, Including the Two Sequels Coming in 2027 — Explained
Mel Brooks directed a handful of the most quoted comedies ever made. He has now outlived the studios that released most of them, and at 100 years old he is executive producing a television series, starring in a sequel to a movie he made in 1987, and watching a fifth property get handed to a new generation of comedians.
That is a strange position for anyone to be in. It is stranger still when you consider that almost nothing in the Brooks catalogue was built to be franchised. These are dense, specific parodies of genres that were already dated when he made them, full of jokes that depend on knowing exactly what he is sending up.
And yet the reboots keep arriving. Some are musicals. One is a cartoon nobody remembers. One is a sketch series that finally paid off a joke he made in 1981. Here is every Mel Brooks project that has been rebooted, remade, or revived, and what actually happened to each one.
The Producers Is the Only One Rebooted Twice, in Two Different Mediums
Brooks’ 1967 debut is the strangest case on this list, because it went film, then stage, then film again.
The original cost 941,000 dollars, shot in 40 days, and barely made its money back on an art-house release. It also won Brooks the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Gene Wilder earned a nomination. Zero Mostel’s contract included a clause releasing him from work after 5:30pm, because a bus accident years earlier had left him with a badly injured leg.
The 2001 Broadway musical is where it became a phenomenon. It ran 2,502 performances and won 12 Tony Awards, still the record for a single production. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick starred, and Brooks wrote the music and lyrics himself.
Then came the part nobody talks about. The 2005 film version of the musical, with Lane and Broderick reprising their roles alongside Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell, made $38 million worldwide against a $45 million budget. The most decorated musical in Broadway history became a flop the moment it went back to the screen it came from.
Young Frankenstein Is Becoming a Series at FX
Brooks has repeatedly called the 1974 film his best work, and the numbers back him up. It made $86 million against a $2.8 million budget and finished as the fourth-highest-grossing American film of the year. The laboratory equipment was the actual set dressing from Universal’s 1931 Frankenstein, tracked down and borrowed for the production.
The 2007 Broadway musical should have worked. Brooks brought back almost the entire team that had just won him 12 Tonys: co-writer Thomas Meehan, director and choreographer Susan Stroman, and Brooks himself on music and lyrics. It grossed close to $60 million and never recouped its budget, closing after 484 performances. It received three Tony nominations and won none. The same people, the same method, the same composer, and a result that could not have gone more differently.
The new version is Very Young Frankenstein, ordered to series at FX and Hulu in May 2026. Zach Galifianakis, Dolly Wells and Spencer House star, with Cary Elwes appearing in the pilot as the President of the United States. It comes from the What We Do in the Shadows team of Stefani Robinson, Taika Waititi and Garrett Basch, with Waititi directing the pilot and Brooks executive producing.
Worth noting: FX has not announced a premiere date, and network president Nick Grad has described it as “a completely original take on the classic story” rather than a continuation.
History of the World, Part I Finally Got Its Part II
The 1981 film ended with a trailer for a sequel that did not exist. Hitler on Ice. Jews in Space. The joke was that there would never be a Part II, because the whole point of the gag was the promise of something absurd enough that nobody could possibly make it.
Then, 42 years later, Hulu made it.
History of the World, Part II arrived in March 2023, and the format shift is the strangest part. The original was a theatrical film. The sequel is an eight-episode sketch series released across four consecutive nights, written and executive produced by Brooks alongside Wanda Sykes, Nick Kroll, Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen. Brooks narrated and appeared throughout, frequently with his head composited onto somebody else’s considerably more muscular body.
Reviews were mixed.
What makes it unlike anything else on this list is who drove it. This is not a studio reviving an old property for a new audience. This is a man in his nineties going back to finish a bit he started when Reagan was in his first year, on a platform that did not exist when he made the joke. Showrunner David Stassen has said he would like to make a Part 3, though nothing has been ordered.
Spaceballs Already Had a Sequel Nobody Remembers
Here is the fact that undercuts every piece of marketing for the new film.
Spaceballs: The Animated Series ran on G4 in 2008. Thirteen episodes, flash-animated, and cancelled before most of them aired, which meant the remaining episodes broadcast after the show was already dead. Brooks returned as both Skroob and Yogurt. Daphne Zuniga came back as Vespa. Joan Rivers returned as Dot Matrix. Rick Moranis and Bill Pullman did not participate.
So when the teaser for the new film claimed there had only ever been one Spaceballs, that was not strictly accurate.
The real sequel is Spaceballs: The New One, in theaters April 23, 2027 from Amazon MGM, timed to the original’s 40th anniversary. Josh Greenbaum directs. Brooks filmed his scenes at 99, playing both Yogurt and President Skroob. Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga and George Wyner return, joined by Josh Gad, Keke Palmer and Lewis Pullman, playing Lone Starr’s son opposite his real father.
The headline is Moranis, back in live action for the first time since 1997. Asked why he agreed, he said it was the only way to get Josh Gad to stop texting him. Brooks took a blunter approach, asking Moranis whether he really wanted to go to his grave without ever returning to show business. Everything known about the sequel so far suggests the pitch worked.
Get Smart Has Been Rebooted More Than Anything Else He Made
Five attempts across four decades, and Brooks was only involved in the first one.
He co-created the series with Buck Henry in 1965, and he is particular about that preposition. With, not and. The show ran 138 episodes across NBC and CBS and won seven Emmys, including Outstanding Comedy Series, with three acting wins for Don Adams.
Then the revivals started. The Nude Bomb in 1980 was made without Brooks, without Henry and without Barbara Feldon, and failed on every measure. Get Smart, Again! in 1989 brought Adams and Feldon back for a television movie and went down far better. A 1995 Fox revival lasted seven episodes. The 2008 film with Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway was the commercial peak at $230 million worldwide, and it spawned a direct-to-video spinoff that arrived eleven days later.
Now Warner Bros. is developing another one, with John Mulaney circling Maxwell Smart and Seth Grahame-Smith writing. There is no director and no release date. Brooks holds a created-by credit on it. That is the extent of his involvement, which makes Get Smart the one property on this list that has fully escaped him.
