This past February, Paramount announced a “Naked Gun” reboot, starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, and set up a July 11, 2025, theatrical date. The original “Naked Gun” movies were created by Jim Abrahams, and brothers David and Jerry Zucker (“Airplane!”). Sadly, these comedic geniuses are not behind this upcoming reboot.
Speaking with TMZ, David Zucker says it came as a bit of a shock when Paramount handed the franchise to a totally different set of creatives. He also expressed skepticism towards any sort of reboot of his beloved franchise, adding that it’s quite difficult to replicate this type of comedy (“don’t try this at home”).
Zucker goes on to mention how he and his partners, Pat Proft and Mike McManus, submitted a script to Paramount, back in 2018, and says they thought the studio liked the concept. Clearly, they went in another direction:
We are not excited about having the franchise given to other people. At the time, I couldn’t believe it because we thought we had a great script, and they loved the script from what we heard. I don’t have any control over it. I’m not involved, and they haven’t asked me for my help…It’s completely their concept, and they’re just going to go ahead and do it.
Neeson has some heavy shoes to fill here. Leslie Nielsen was sheer perfection in 1988’s “The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad!” — this comedy classic, a spoof of the detective genre, was created by Zucker only after he scrapped plans for “Airplane II.” ‘
Neeson taking on the iconic Nielson role might actually work out here. I can definitely imagine Neeson poking fun of his own action star image. He has a rather intense persona in all of his films, barely exuding any sense of humor, that it could be amusingly self-deprecating for him to poke fun at it.
The “Naked Gun” reboot will be directed by Akiva Schaffer and written by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand. Schaffer directed “Hot Rod” and “Popstar: Never Stop Stopping.” Schaffer, Gregor and Mand all worked together on 2022’s “Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers.”