Rick Mora­nis is com­ing out of retire­ment for a Hon­ey, I Shrunk the Kids sequel

For a minute there in the ​’80s and ​’90s, it looked like Rick Mora­nis might have been one of the world’s biggest movie stars. He land­ed plum roles in Ghost­busters, Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors, Space­balls, and Hon­ey, I Shrunk the Kids that made him into a house­hold name, the very spit­ting image of the neb­bish type.

But he with­drew from screen act­ing in 1997, when his wife passed away and he stepped up to become pri­ma­ry care­giv­er to his two chil­dren. Fol­low­ing twen­ty-three long years of fol­low­ing through on that noble, dif­fi­cult choice, Mora­nis now report­ed­ly con­sid­ers him­self back on the mar­ket and ready for a new gig.

Dead­line reports that with his chil­dren grown and large­ly inde­pen­dent, he’s deigned to return to the Hon­ey, I Shrunk the Kids fran­chise for anoth­er sequel, fol­low­ing up on the direct-to-video third install­ment Hon­ey, We Shrank Our­selves. The fourth film, as of now unti­tled, will return Mora­nis to brick-and-mor­tar the­aters instead of shunt­ing him off to Dis­ney Plus.

Mora­nis will reprise his char­ac­ter of Wayne Sza­lin­s­ki, though he’ll cede the pro­tag­o­nist spot­light to Wayne’s new­ly intro­duced son, to be played by Josh Gad. This time around, he’s the one using the pow­ers of sci­ence to make his off­spring itty-bit­ty while Wayne pre­sum­ably reflects on his life of reck­less exper­i­men­ta­tion, wracked with regret.

Even if the movie itself turns out to be a cal­low cash-in, the sto­ry of Mora­nis’ slow return to per­form­ing makes for a stir­ring one. He got his sea legs back in 2018 with a live com­e­dy spe­cial that reunit­ed him with his old pals from SCTV, a momen­tous con­ver­gence cap­tured by Mar­tin Scors­ese for an upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary about the influ­en­tial sketch com­e­dy crew.

Mora­nis may have gone away for a while, but he’ll be pleased to see that the indus­try and the pub­lic can’t wait to wel­come him back.