Mel Brooks to Write Sequel to 'History of the World'

Actor, comedian and writer Mel Brooks, holds up his 2015 National Medal of Arts awarded to him by ex-President Barack Obama during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Carolyn Kaster / AP
Actor, comedian and writer Mel Brooks, holds up his 2015 National Medal of Arts awarded to him by ex-President Barack Obama during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Carolyn Kaster / AP
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Mel Brooks to Write Sequel to 'History of the World'

Actor, comedian and writer Mel Brooks, holds up his 2015 National Medal of Arts awarded to him by ex-President Barack Obama during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Carolyn Kaster / AP
Actor, comedian and writer Mel Brooks, holds up his 2015 National Medal of Arts awarded to him by ex-President Barack Obama during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Carolyn Kaster / AP

Mel Brooks, the 95-year-old US comedy icon, is to help write a sequel for his 1981 classic film "A History of The World Part I" as an eight-part series for Hulu, the streaming service said Monday.

"I 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 veteran movie-maker and actor said in a statement.

Brooks, one of the few artists to have received awards from across the full spectrum of Emmys, Grammys, Oscars and Tonys, made the original "History of the World Part I" 40 years ago.

According to Hulu, Brooks will be supported in the production and writing of the show by Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes, Ike Barinholtz, David Stassen and Kevin Salter.

Writing for the series should begin "this month" and filming start in the spring of 2022, said the platform, whose majority shareholder is Disney.

A worldwide success after its release in 1981, "History of the World Part I" is a slapstick comedy that parodied history from the Stone Age to the French Revolution.

Brooks played the parts of Moses and King Louis XVI, among others.

The film ended with the announcement of a sequel featuring a segment called "Hitler on Ice," along with a teaser of an ice-skating German dictator.

Born on June 26, 1926 into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, Brooks always wanted to ridicule Hitler -- as in one of his first musicals, "The Producers", which became one of his greatest hits.

The filmmaker's memoir is expected to come out at the end of November.



Tim Burton Talks about His Dread of AI as an Exhibition of His Work Opens in London

 A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
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Tim Burton Talks about His Dread of AI as an Exhibition of His Work Opens in London

 A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)

The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits – all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.

But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.

Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters “really disturbed me.”

“It wasn’t an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling,” Burton told reporters during a preview of “The World of Tim Burton” exhibition at London’s Design Museum. “I looked at those things and I thought, ‘Some of these are pretty good.’ ... (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside.”

Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because “once you can do it, people will do it.” But he scoffed when asked if he’d use the technology in this work.

“To take over the world?” he laughed.

The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and colored pencils in his suburban Californian home.

“I wasn’t, early on, a very verbal person,” Burton said. “Drawing was a way of expressing myself.”

Decades later, after films including “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Beetlejuice,” his ideas still begin with drawing. The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton's personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.

London is the exhibition’s final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in the British capital, where Burton has lived for a quarter century.

The show includes early drawings and oddities, including a competition-winning “crush litter” sign a teenage Burton designed for Burbank garbage trucks. There’s also a recreation of Burton’s studio, down to the trays of paints and “Curse of Frankenstein” mug full of pencils.

Alongside hundreds of drawings, there are props, puppets, set designs and iconic costumes, including Johnny Depp’s “Edward Scissorhands” talons and the black latex Catwoman costume worn by Michelle Pfeiffer in “Batman.”

“We had very generous access to Tim’s archive in London, stuffed full of thousands of drawings, storyboards from stop-motion films, sketches, character notes, poems,” said exhibition curator Maria McLintock. “And how to synthesize such a wide ranging and meandering career within one exhibition was a fun challenge — but definitely a challenge.”

Seeing it has not been a wholly fun experience for Burton, who said he’s unable to look too closely at the items on display.

“It’s like seeing your dirty laundry put on the walls,” he said. “It’s quite amazing. It’s a bit overwhelming.”

Burton, whose long-awaited horror-comedy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opened at the Venice Film Festival in August, is currently filming the second series of Netflix’ Addams Family-themed series “Wednesday.”

These days he is a major Hollywood director whose American gothic style has spawned an adjective – “Burtoneqsue.” But he still feels like an outsider.

“Once you feel that way, it never leaves you,” he said.

“Each film I did was a struggle,” he added, noting that early films like “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” from 1985 and “Beetlejuice” in 1988 received some negative reviews. “It seems like it was a pleasant, fine, easy journey, but each one leaves its emotional scars.”

McLintock said Burton “is a deeply emotional filmmaker."

“I think that’s what drew me to his films as a child,” she said. "He really celebrates the misunderstood outcast, the benevolent monster. So it’s been quite a weird but fun experience spending so much time in his brain and his creative process.

“His films are often called dark,” she added. “I don’t agree with that. And if they are dark, there’s a very much a kind of hope in the darkness. You always want to hang out in the darkness in his films.”