Hulu announces History Of The World, Part II series from Mel Brooks
The legendary director and comedian is finally getting around to making the sequel
Aux News Mel Brooks
40 years after the release of History Of The World, Part I, Mel Brooks is finally getting around to making a sequel—and this time it will be in a format that arguably makes more sense for the concept than a feature film. As announced today in a press release, Hulu has picked up History Of The World, Part II as an eight-episode variety series executive produced and written by Brooks, Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes, Ike Barinholtz, David Stassen, and Kevin Salter.
The original movie was basically a series of historical vignettes, so cutting out the middleman (and the pretense of it being a movie) by just making it a sketch comedy show seems like a smart choice. In a statement, Brooks said that he “can’t wait to once more tell the real truth about all the phony baloney stories the world has been conned into believing are History.”
The movie covered everything from the dawn of man through the French Revolution, which gives the Hulu series 220-odd years to play with. We don’t know what sort of wacky historical hijinks will be involved here, since the press release says the writers room is just getting to work this month and production won’t start until spring, but it’ll be interesting to see if Brooks and company leave room for a third History Of The World.
Call it recency bias, but a lot of important stuff has happened in these last 200 years for an eight-episode variety show to cover all of it. We had two Brush presidencies, two World Wars, and six Transformers movies! Or will History Of The World, Part II catch up to the release of Part I in the ‘80s and we’ll get a Mel Brooks musical comedy routine making fun of Mel Brooks musical comedy routines? Because that could be incredible.
158 Comments
Psyched.
Will we get what was promised?
We did!
I found one error in this article: Brush presidencies—> Bush presidencies
I think it’s safe to say the majority of these articles are written on smartphones.
You can still give the goddamned thing a quick once-over before it’s published
Why is there no period at the end of that sentence?
Because this is an internet comment and not an article I’m being paid to write
He’s a volunteer. See, it’s in his name!
I no rite htis is so stupit
anyone can amke a mistake!
Editors at these sites? Yeah right.
I once wrote an error-free 1,300-word piece on a smartphone in the span of 2 hours. I refuse to give them even that excuse.
Ah. I wondered what the hell they were saying there.
Who could forget the 43rd American president George W Brush?
Not that is an offensive Tigger flag. Please take it down.
Now he’s into painting with paint bushes.
A Brush with destiny!
Did you miss the two terms of Basil Brush?
I remember the Brush presidencies. Two brothers as I recall, from the wealthy Massachusetts Brushes. The older of the two, Tooth was his name, he was a fine man and president. I didn’t much care for the younger brother, Toilet. ‘Course he was assassinated in office, so not many could stomach him.
What’s wrong with that?
I got a Brush notification for this?
I’ll give it a pass.
JEWS IN SPAAAACE!
We’re Jews out in spaaaace. Always on guard, defending the people’s rights….wait a minute….
If this isn’t an episode I will be beyond disappointed. Keep Hitler on Ice I want JEWS IN SPACE!
William Shatner’s Jewish…..
I don’t think George Takei has a problem with Jews in space, just William Shatner.
He doesn’t dislike him because he’s a Jew; it’s because he’s an asshole.
That’s my point.
That’s what I said, THIRD BASE!
And so, it begins…
Not Jewish enough.
Jerry Seinfeld?“What is it with space?”
“I was on board the space shuttle, and my peanuts floated away!”
Oh hell yes.Jews in space or there will be a LOT of annoyed complaining.About that. I’m sure people will find plenty to complain about in other ways, but if they don’t have it they’ll get specific complaints about that.
I want to see a Viking funeral.
…and so you shall!
MEL BROOKS IS JEWISH?!
They should send Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel up there in a capsule until they learn to get along.
Bill Shatner was just there!
I wonder how many of his daddys billions helped Kroll get into this position
Well, just the first billion…he didn’t need help from all the billions.
Could be that he’s just a hilarious and talented guy, as he’s shown time and time again.
Um… Like… One of them?
Might have got some change back too.
Nick Kroll walks into a movie studio with a check for “one of Daddy’s billions,” hands it to a studio executive. The executive says, “Yeah, we only need sixty million.” So he writes a check for “94/100 of one of Daddy’s billions” and hands it back. I think it works better if the exchange involves gigantic novelty checks.
I saw the picture of Mel Brooks and immediately thought it was an obit. Gonna need a lot of sleep to get over that panic attack.
SAME!!
I know. My first thought was, “Oh shit.”
Relax, he’s yet to outlive Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga, Richard Lewis and Cary Elwes.
Amy Yasbeck?
Nobody outlives Amy Yasbeck
I can’t help saying that in “Spanish Inquisition” voice.
Call it recency bias, but a lot of important stuff has happened in these
last 200 years for an eight-episode variety show to cover all of it.
Oh don’t worry, Mel Brooks has personally experienced most of that time period.
2000 years to be precise.
Ive always wanted a sequel, despite the joke is that it’s based on a book that never got a part 2. Regardless I am so down for this.
Yeah, I think Raleigh was pretty ambitious to think he had time to write a second volume.
It was quite adorable that he felt he had plenty of time to write multiple volumes. But hey, his loss our gain.
yeah, what is he George RR Martin over here?
Weird, I was just thinking about the 15 Commandments joke from that movie earlier today.
Oy, TEN. Ten commandments!
One of the best gags from a movie chock full of ‘em! It would definitely explain a lot.
I dunno, man. I am so inspired by Mel’s creative and comedy genius. But he’s such a product of his time. Obviously he prefers working to retirement so all the more power to him, but I wish he didn’t feel the need to keep gilding the lily (see: Spaceballs: The Animated Series).
Spaceballs was all about the Search for More Money.
No that was to be the sequel.
I still have my Spaceballs Flamethrower!
Mel Brooks is a comedic God but it would be interesting to see how he squares his love of completely coming up to third rails of offensive subjects and then hoping back and forth them over and over again in today’s environment.
He will probably be fine. He doesn’t like punching down and even he has limits on what he’ll mock. There’s a reason he deeply hated Life Is Beautiful.
Exactly! Nobody’s safe in a Mel Brooks film.
I just hope they can get Orson Welles to narrate this one.
That might be a hard get, but I could see Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones being good fit for the role if they can’t dig Welles up.
Not as long as Maurice LaMarche is with us!
Good point! I went through the first season of Pinky and the Brain thinking it was Welles doing the voice.
you pretty much can’t beat the OG OW for voicing a megalomaniac.
Maurice LaMarche is standing by just waiting for the call.
Sorry, he’s doing frozen peas for Nigel.
Every so often I’m going about my business, and suddenly I hear Orson Welles’ sonorous, exasperated voice saying, “If you can tell me how to say ‘in’ at the beginning of a sentence in English and emphasize it, I’ll go down on you.” Maybe I have a brain tumor…
Eh, just get Maurice LaMarche, he’s been doing a great Welles voice for decades.
Seeing Nick Kroll’s name attached gives me some hope, but yeah. My initial reaction was much the same as yours.
Brooks always worked best with collaborative efforts. His classics were mostly collaborations with Wilder and others.If he’s willing to sit down and actually work with Sykes, Kroll, etc.? I’m definitely interested in seeing what weirdness comes out the other side.
Brooks always worked best with collaborative efforts
That may be why the finale of season 4 of Curb Your Enthusiasm is up there with the “Basil the Rat” episode of Fawlty Towers on my list of funniest sitcom episodes ever aired and the scene in the bar with Brooks and Anne Bancroft competes with “What does a yellow light mean” and the WKRP turkey drop for the funniest five minutes in television history.
I mean, it has been thirteen years since that cartoon, and he really hasn’t done much since. It doesn’t seem like he works on stuff unless he wants to.
Let’s face it, you can’t Torquemada anything!
The format is limited, not Mel. Clearly many of his movies and jokes would never be created in our era (Blazing Saddles was perfectly done with Richard Pryor to make a point of inclusion, but there’s no way audiences would approve more than five minutes of it), but Hulu is fairly free form so maybe a sitcom can finally allow him to have the best format for his material?
Yeah the Spaceballs cartoon is the first thing I thought of. Has he done anything since then?
Honestly, I have heard some interviews he has done in the last decade where he just tells show biz stories and I feel like that should be what he does now. He has so many amazing stories about the industry and is an amazing story teller
*Finally*. I’ve been waiting for Hitler on Ice for decades.
Only if it ends with him getting Zambonied.
I believe we have a job for Deadpool given he has experience with both the Fuhrer and Zamboni killings.
Mel Gibson? Is that you?
Hey, Sugar Tits!
I want to be excited about this, but then I remember the Spaceballs cartoon.
Per Variety: “Brooks is a writer and executive producer on the series along with Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes, Ike Barinholtz, David Stassen and Kevin Salter.”
I think we’re in good hands.
I agree. It looks like he’s put together a wicked bullpen for this one.
I’ve honestly never been a fan of the Spaceballs movie. I’m a huge fan of Mel Brooks, but I didn’t think it was that funny, and don’t think it’s held up all that well.
“and don’t think it’s held up all that well.”
Wait, you don’t like it, you didn’t like it, but you’ve watched it recently?
Same. Huge Mel Brooks fan. Spaceballs came out when I was 13 years old. Presumably I was the prime viewing audience. I hated it, even though most of my friends revered it. I didn’t think it was funny. I’ve tried revisiting it a number of times since then, and came away feeling the same. There are a few funny scenes, but it’s mostly trite, dumb obvious jokes. So disappointing.
I’m younger than you as I was 4 when it debuted, but I have the impression. We purchased a Mel Brooks Blu-ray boxset a few years ago and revisited it, and neither my wife or I enjoyed that one. This set was most definitely not this expensive when we bought it, but I’d highly recommend it if you can find it at a reasonable price https://www.amazon.com/Mel-Brooks-Collection-Blu-ray/dp/B007LNBS2I/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Mel+Brooks+Box+set&qid=1634652173&sr=8-1. It introduced us to some of his movies we hadn’t seen before such as The Twelve Chairs.
I was 8, and I absolutely loved it, even as I knew how lame Pizza the Hut and Major Asshole and various other jokes were. It was probably the first dick jokes and slapstick for a lot of people my age. The luggage joke, the Schwartz dick jokes, Rick Moranis slapstick. Burned into my brain even now.I also loved Get Smart. And History Of The World upon viewing a year or two later. Also largely for slapstick and dick jokes.
Finallly!!!!
“It’s a Miracle!” **neigh**
I don’t know how Wanda Sykes ended up in that writing room, but I’m glad she’s there.
In the tradition of 30 Rock, she’s a ‘threefer’ (as opposed to a twofer).
But that (jokingly) implies she’s only got her position by virtue of identity politics, which is stupid, because she’s fucking hilarious, which, I suspect, is how she ended up in the room.
I’m glad she’s there too, but I’m not surprised. Brooks has always done his best work when he’s had edgy comics to collaborate with. He had Richard Pryor in the bullpen that cranked out Blazing Saddles.On a somewhat related note, it’s been said that Pryor was the first choice for the role Gregory Hines ended up playing in History of the World, Part I, but he was burned just before filming started in that infamous incident in ‘80.
I think you’re a bit mixed up with Pryor. I know Brooks wanted him to play the role, but that fire incident came several years after Blazing Saddles.
Yeah, you’re right. The story I always heard about him being nixed from Blazing Saddles was that he was just too controversial for the studio.To bring it full circle I believe the Brooks role he had to back out of because of the fire thing was the Gregory Hines role in the original History of the World movie.
Re-read that. You mis-read what he said.
You’re right, it appears I did. I didn’t think Gregory Hines was right for Blazing Saddles.
Ignore my prior comment. As someone pointed out, I misread what you said. Negative 5 stars for me.
Take a star for being the first internet commentator to actually admit when you made a mistake.
That’s OK.
He had Richard Pryor in the bullpen that cranked out Blazing Saddles.Mongo only pawn in Game of Life.
He had cranked out Richard Pryor blazing in the bullpen.
They’ve both worked with Larry David?
Just please keep him alive for another few decades.
This seems like a terrible idea.
That’s what you said about the Hindenburg.
and the DeLorean.
Oh wow, I made a remark on a lack of a Part 2 on Reddit just in the last month or two.
Not for nothin’, but they should probably have Mel do whatever he’s responsible for first.
Who doesn’t love Mel Brooks, but making a business commitment to a 95 year old is an interesting choice.
I was just thinking, how pissed at the world must Brooks be to be getting into this now? He must be boiling over with ideas.
making a business commitment to a 95 year old is an interesting choice.
They appear to be hedging their bets in the sense that they are giving him fewer episodes than he got for When Things Were Rotten.
If he dies, they’ll just do the ‘dropping one of the 15 Commandments’ bit but with somebody dropping the corpse of Mel Brooks that then shatters into several small pieces.
Nah. It’s going to be greeted with a certain degree of, “Awe.”Followed by a brief funeral service.
It seems like he has a bunch of people on board to carry out the project, just in case…
It’s good to be the king.
They should use the Damned song “History Of The World Part 2″ as the theme tune – co-written with Hans Zimmer of all people!
Or the damned song “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It”; or even the fucking song “We Didn’t Start The Fire”.
Who fucks to that song?
I’ll try almost anything once, but I doubt I could last that long.
I’m sorry, the correct answer was Billy Joel.
You couldn’t do that today, etc.
*7 Transformers movies. The one in ‘86 was pretty good (and even featured the narrator of History of the World Part I as the villain). You can skip the rest.
This is exciting. I don’t know how Mel Brook’s humor holds up in this day and age, but I’m ready to test those waters.
But without Madeline Kahn, what is the point?
“Recency bias?” I think you mean, “Regency bias,” amiright?(Seriously, that’s literally the next historical period after the first movie ends, though I was just going for the pun.)
I remember the 2 Brush presidencies well…
Bush the president was called Bush not Brush. As an American living in the 21st Century then I hope you know the names of all the 21st Century Presidents.
sure, there was Jimmy Crater, Reggie Ragnarok, George Brush the Elder, Bill Clanton, George Brush the Younger, Borat Umbrella, Ronald Thump and Jo Bidenkirk.
What do I win?
Jerrald Chevy?
Ronald Thump has in fact been used before, in a Rugrats episode!
I didn’t watch that show, got to plead ignorance on that one. But credit where credit is due!
I’m in.
Meh…could use a little more salt.
It’s good to be the king.
I can’t wait for a Mel Brooks musical number about the Civil War.
I’m really looking forward to this.Mel has a huge history of only punching up, and he hasn’t been one of the vocal “You can’t make anything today without being cancelled!” people. Plus, he’s got a solid track record of surrounding himself with people who won’t just say, “do that”. So i have hopes for this. I mean… “Blazing Saddles” gets thrown around as “a movie you can’t get made today..” and yet it’s an hour and a half of making fun of racists… (the ending part maybe wouldn’t get made today. Or it would. I don’t know anymore.)
“Blazing Saddles” gets thrown around as “a movie you can’t get made today..” At Warner Bros.? Probably not. But if this was Universal or Disney, both known for recycling movies and TV shows faster than an aluminum processing facility, that remake would be premiering on Disney + or Peacock tonight.
President Brush
What is a Brush presidency?
He’s really about, well exactly, 40 years too late.He really lost it all after Life Stinks.
I remember at PAX 07 (Seattle) we ran into Mel Brooks as we were leaving Ruth’s Chris (company was paying, don’t look at me like that). This would have been in the middle of the Young Frankenstein previews. He seemed….very old. Definitely not as …uh…sharp…as he once was? Not casting aspersions. Dude was in his 80s it was totally appropriate.But I got to think this announcement is just using his name, as I don’t think the Mel Brooks of 14 years ago seemed up to what is being implied here. …shit, that was 14 years ago.
Is Mel Brooks a national treasure? Yes. Am i glad he’s alive? Yes. Has he made anything funny in the past 35 years? No.Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, The Producers—genius and hysterical. SSilent Movie, High Anxiety, brilliant and underrated. History of the World, Spaceballs–some laughs, not great. Life Stinks, Men in Tights, Dracula Dead And Loving It–absolutely terrible. The man’s returns have been diminishing for decades, now. I hope the writers’ room saves him from embarrassment.