Honey I Shrunk the Kids icon Rick Moranis cut a casual figure in a rare sighting in New York City – as he awaits his big screen comeback after years of reclusion.
Moranis, 72, gradually withdrew from the movies to focus on raising his children after his wife Ann Belsky died of breast cancer in 1991.
His last live action feature was the 1997 picture Honey We Shrunk Ourselves, since which fans have still been occasionally been able to hear him in voice roles.
Last year, however, it emerged that he has been cast in Spaceballs 2, the upcoming sequel to the classic 1987 Star Wars spoof Spaceballs by Mel Brooks.
When he surfaced in New York this week, Moranis was comfortably attired in a true blue sweater with a set of stylish pale grey slacks.
Warding off the rays with a baseball cap, the Ghostbusters icon wore a set of tortoiseshell spectacles and carried a jacket in one hand.
Honey I Shrunk the Kids icon Rick Moranis cut a casual figure in a rare sighting in New York City – as he awaits his big screen comeback after years of reclusion
When he surfaced in New York this week, Moranis was comfortably attired in a true blue sweater with a set of stylish pale grey slacks
Moranis was married to his late wife, a costume designer, for five years before she died at the age of 34, leaving him to look after their children Rachel and Mitchell.
Until that point, Moranis had been vigorously active in Hollywood and had three films out in 1989 alone – Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Ghostbusters II and Parenthood.
However when he became a single father he phased himself out of the public eye, although he continued with the Honey I Shrunk The Kids franchise.
A sequel called Honey I Blew up the Kid came out in 1992, and Moranis’ latest live-action movie Honey We Shrunk Ourselves was released direct to video in 1997.
In the intervening years he did not leave showbiz entirely, releasing the tongue-in-cheek country album The Agoraphobic Cowboy in 2005 and another record called My Mother’s Brisket and Other Love Songs eight years later.
He also voice acted sporadically in both Brother Bear movies and a direct-to-video release called Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys.
In 2019 news emerged that he was slated to return to the big screen in a live-action capacity for the Honey I Shrunk the Kids called Shrunk.
However the COVID-19 lockdowns arrived the following year and hurled the project into a hiatus from which it has since never managed to emerge.
Join the debate
Should stars like Rick Moranis put family ahead of their career, or is Hollywood missing out?
Moranis, 72, is pictured with Marcia Strassman in his 1989 sci-fi comedy Honey I Shrunk the Kids, a classic that launched a franchise
Moranis is returning to the spotlight for a sequel to his 1987 Mel Brooks film Spaceballs, in which he is pictured playing a parody of Darth Vader
Moranis is pictured flanked by Harold Ramis (left) and Dan Aykroyd (right) in the original Ghostbusters picture, which also launched a franchise after its release in 1984
Late in 2020, Moranis received an outpouring of public sympathy when he was the victim of a random sidewalk sucker punch amid New York’s spiraling crime crisis.
Last year it was officially announced that Moranis had joined the star-studded cast of 99-year-old Mel Brooks’ follow-up to his sci-fi comedy classic Spaceballs.
The original 1987 movie featured Moranis as a Darth Vader parody called Lord Dark Helmet, amid a cast including John Candy, Bill Pullman and Joan Rivers.
Candy and Rivers are both dead, but Pullman and Moranis are returning for the sequel as well as Daphne Zunga and George Wyner, also from the original feature.
Among the new cast members in Spaceballs 2 are Keke Palmer, Josh Gad and Anthony Carrigan as well as Bill Pullman’s son Lewis Pullman, via Deadline.
Read the full article here
