Slapstick Meets Crime in The Naked Gun 2025

There’s an old saying that one way to make God laugh is to make a plan. The Naked Gun is another. The seminal spoof comedy series, which redefined the concept of the deadpan crime caper with its over-the-top innuendo and flat-as-a-board one-liners, is now officially returning to the big screen after a 25-year hiatus. On August 1, 2025, we will once again be assaulted (in the nicest possible way) with the sight of police badges being torn off by fleeing suspects.

The man donning the uniform badge this time around isn’t the inimitable Leslie Nielsen, though. Instead, it will be Liam Neeson, who has been cast as the son of Nielsen’s character Frank Drebin in what is being billed as a “legacy sequel” to the franchise.

The first Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! Premiered in 1988 to almost instant classic status, and spawned two direct sequels. The film followed Detective Frank Drebin (Nielsen) and his attempts to prevent a coup to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II (Lily Tomlin) on her state visit to the U.S. Drebin, perennially in the wrong place at the wrong time, attempted to save the day in a series of increasingly improbable stunts and wild coincidences, armed only with a contempt for accuracy (or “specs,” as he called them) and a corny one-liner to match.

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear followed a year later, with Drebin once again tasked with foiling a plot to kidnap the top nuclear scientist in the U.S. In 1994, Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult had Drebin re-entering the world of crime-fighting (he had officially retired) in order to stop a bomb plot at the Academy Awards.

Attempts to reboot the series were first announced in 2013 by Paramount Pictures, and the sequel was picked up with a new Drebin in tow. Starring The Office’s Ed Helms as Frank Drebin, no relation, the project sputtered to a stop a year later and was in a state of development hell for the better part of a decade. The issue for producers was, at least in part, creative. David Zucker, director and co-producer of the original Naked Gun and Naked Gun 2½, was reticent to get involved with any reboot that wasn’t better than the originals, which he saw as nigh impossible. “It would be inferior,” he said in a 2015 interview with the Daily Beast. “It would be silly to even consider doing anything unless it was superior.”

Zucker would circle back to the project in 2017 when he was re-hired to rewrite a script in which Drebin’s son was, in fact, a secret agent—a film which also remains in limbo.

The project would eventually come back to life in 2021, with Seth MacFarlane (creator of Family Guy, the film director of Pinky and the Brain, and performer of the Peter Griffin Naked Gun spoof for the late Chris Farley) signed on to helm. This time, however, Zucker was not on board.

Enter Liam Neeson.

In 2023, the actor was announced as Drebin Jr., a lieutenant in police, just as hapless in following a trail and solving a crime as his father was in solving the crime in the first place. The younger Drebin will be joined by Paul Walter Hauser, who will play Captain Ed Hocken, Jr., the son of Drebin Sr.’s chief foil; Pamela Anderson as Beth, a sultry femme fatale whose brother has been murdered and whose fortunes Drebin Jr. is now forced to unravel; and Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, CCH Pounder, Busta Rhymes, and Eddy Yu.

It’s unclear how well-received the first teaser trailer for the film, which debuted in April, is likely to be. Zucker was quoted by TMZ as saying that he regretted having seen it and that “I can’t unsee it.” This, for a man who famously cited his early films as among his favorites of all time, is, um, not great.

On the plus side, however, the trailer shows Neeson committing to the genre hard with a knowing parody of the serious guy with a “particular set of skills” trope from his Taken days. In one scene, Drebin is shirtless, having just strangled a bad guy, and growls, “Once you kill a man for revenge, there’s no going back!” He then continues by ripping the arms off his attacker and using them as a weapon, all with a straight face. “A voice in your head saying over and over, ‘That was awesome. ’”

Fans of the Naked Gun may get a little misty-eyed when Frank and Ed Jr. get misty-eyed about their fathers in front of plaques commemorating their fathers’ legacies, but that’s the spirit of what we like to call homage and not homage at all.

You can’t watch the trailer without nodding in recognition at more classic Naked Gun moments, too, like Drebin ordering police reinforcements from the bathroom of a coffee shop on the sly and then dramatically flashing a badge when challenged, all in the name of “police business.” And though the gag’s setup is better than the payoff in some cases, like any attempt at parodying police procedurals, the basic plot of the film is still just an excuse for the mayhem, which is a reassuring thing. It will likely follow an all-too-familiar Naked Gun formula: With her brother murdered, Beth (Anderson) comes to Drebin Jr. for help. He must solve the mystery or lose the Police Squad to departmental budget cuts. A suspect on the case, Drebin and Ed Jr. find, is a convict who says he spent 20 years in jail for “man’s laughter.” Correcting him that it was “manslaughter,” Drebin says dryly, “Must have been quite the joke.”

Old fans might lament the quips getting more modern in their nods and Neeson not quite having the skillset or hairline required to fully channel the energy of the inimitable Frank Drebin Sr. himself, but that’s, again, the nature of the parodying beast. That said, Neeson has time to get comfy in the role; he only has to wait a year until this new take on Police Squad and his old friend comes to theaters for us to see if he has the skills.