David Zucker, the director of the Naked Gun, revealed he had no plans to see the film because he was unimpressed by the Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson reboot.
David Zucker, the creator of the Naked Gun franchise, has no plans to watch the reboot featuring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, and it’s not just because he wasn’t impressed by the film’s trailer.
After Paramount Pictures chose to reject his script and work with producer Seth MacFarlane, Zucker, who also directed the original 1980s police comedy, revealed that he wasn’t snubbed from the reboot but rather was rather left out.
The Naked Gun, which first hit cinemas in 1988 starring Leslie Nielson, Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalban and O.J. Simpson, was a box office hit. It comes after Liam and Pamela fuelled romance rumours with a cryptic social media post.
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The spoof-comedy was followed by two sequels in the 1990s. Zucker, along with his brother Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams (otherwise known as comedy trio ZAZ), was also the creative force behind the 1980 cult classic Airplane! and he went on to direct films in the Scary Movie franchise.
Zucker told the Daily Mail, “I wrote the entire script for Naked Gun 4 on spec for Paramount.” I fully understand why Seth MacFarlane was chosen by the studio. Although he has a reputation and is a household name, Liam Neeson is not a novel concept.
During the early stages of the reboot’s development, Zucker said he was approached by MacFarlane – best known as the creator of the long-running animated series Family Guy – who praised his work and told Zucker he ‘idolised’ the original Naked Gun films.
Seth told me in a conversation that he had spent ten minutes idolizing Top Secret, Naked Gun, and Airplane, and that he had a conversation with him. How on earth can you be angry with someone who boasts of your accomplishments? However, just because the guy at my dry cleaners is a fan doesn’t mean he can’t do Naked Gun.
Based on the waning ABC television series Police Squad, the original Naked Gun movie! starred Nielsen as police detective Frank Drebin, whose portrayal directly spoofed the era’s well-known crime dramas. The movie earned $ 152. 4 million on a $12 million budget following its December 1988 release. The sequel Naked Gun 212-22: The Smell of Fear was released in 1991, followed by Naked Gun 33+13: The Final Insult in 1994.
Neeson portrays bumbling cop Frank Drebin Jr., who has followed his father’s footsteps into law enforcement, in the reboot, and Anderson portrays femme fatale Beth Davenport. Akiva Schaffer, a former Saturday Night Live writer and co-writer, and Doug Mand, co-wrote the remake.
Zucker criticized the 2025 version for sticking to the same old formula and making jokes that matched the first installment. He made a funny point about Anderson’s Beth getting told to “take a chair” when she arrives in Drebin’s office, which she replies, “No thank you, I have plenty of chairs at home.”
Before questioning Neeson’s casting, Zucker quipped, “We gave up doing those jokes in Police Squad 40 years ago.” He wasn’t required to be funny, OJ. Even Leslie Nielsen doesn’t need to be funny either. He simply needed to be an actor in a B-movie. That is what we did. Liam Neeson, for instance, is of Oscar quality, whereas we didn’t pretend to cast Lawrence Olivier or even Al Pacino. He might have won, in my opinion, for Schindler’s List. What is he making fun of, exactly?
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that Zucker has faced criticism from Paramount Pictures for a remake of one of his movies; instead, he was also cut out of the 1982 sequel Airplane II, which was directed and written by Ken Finkleman. Critics slated the follow-up, which only managed $ 27.2 million domestically and $ 83 million domestically, compared to the original’s $83 million box office success.
Source: Mirror
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