Mel Brooks Waited 40 Years For This Sequel, See The First Look
History of the World Part II was teased 40 years ago, and now the project is becoming reality as a streaming series on Hulu.
Mel Brooks’s celebrated comedy, History of the World, Part I, famously ended with a teaser for its supposed sequel, History of the World, Part II. The teaser included some very outlandish bits, including Hitler on Ice and the Star Wars parody Jews in Space. For the past 40 years, everyone assumed that the teaser was meant to be an absurd comedic endnote to the absurd comedic film and that Mel Brooks had no intent to make a sequel. Well, whether he intended it or not, the streaming services need content, so History of the World, Part II is coming to Hulu, and newly-released stills from the movie (via Deadline) give us a good look at what to expect.
The first of Mel Brooks’ historical farces, History of the World, Part I included five separate segments. The scattered plot covers The Stone Age, Moses giving the fifteen Ten Commandments to the Israelites, a “stand-up philosopher” performing a comedy routine to Caeser and then having to escape being executed when he offends the emperor, an upbeat musical about the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, and an aristocrat using a lookalike servant to escape execution during the French Revolution.
Unlike History of the World, Part I, Mel Brooks will be using an episodic format for Hulu’s History of the World, Part II. No official list of episodes or topics has been released, but the newly-published images give us a hint of what’s to come. Subjects that will be lampooned include exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, the life of congresswoman Shirley Chrisholm, and what appears to be a trademark-free version of the Winter Olympics.
There are three actors identified in the released images — none of whom were in Mel Brooks’ previous History of the World film. Leon Trotsky will be played by Ike Barinholtz, the actor who played Griggs in the 2016 Suicide Squad film, and Jimmy in the 2019 film Neighbors. Wanda Sykes, former late night host on The Wanda Sykes Show and a recurring guest star on Black-ish will play Shirley Chrisholm. Nick Kroll, best known for his roles in the Sing movies and the Netflix series Big Mouth, will play an unknown street vendor named Schmuck Mudman and will join both Sykes and Barinholtz in the Olympics segment.
Mel Brooks’ new History of the World series comes as the famed comedic writer, actor, and producer is making something of a comeback. This year, he wrote, produced, and appeared in the martial arts comedy Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, which was a loose remake of the 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles, only with the movie’s racial overtones being replaced with animosity between cats and dogs. Before Paws of Fury, Mel Brooks had played multiple roles but hadn’t served as writer/producer/actor of anything since the short-lived Spaceballs: The Animated Series. He has another coming down the pipeline as well: He’s in the process of making a TV special called Young Frankenstein Live, which lists him as writer, producer, and actor.
