The director of the original Naked Gun movies has hit out at the 2025 reboot, saying the movie “missed” what made the first films funny, and that the filmmakers were “in it for the money”.
READ MORE: ‘The Naked Gun’ review: outrageously stupid comedy reboot fails to keep up with the classics
David Zucker wrote all three of The Naked Gun movies, starring Leslie Nielsen as bumbling detective Frank Drebin, as well as directing two of the trilogy. This year, Liam Neeson stepped into the lead in a reboot, playing Nielsen’s character’s son, in a comedy co-starring Pamela Anderson.
The film was a box office success, making $102.1million (£77.5million) worldwide against a $42million (£31.9million) budget. However, Zucker declined to be involved with the film, refusing an Executive Producer credit and turning down the chance to see the film in advance of its release.
Now, in a new interview with Woman’s World, the director went on a renewed attack, criticising the reboot’s humour and the choice of star.
“My brother, Jerry, and our partner, Jim Abrahams, started doing spoof comedies 50 years ago, and we originated our own style—and we did that so well that it looks easy, evidently,” he said. “People started copying it, like [producer] Seth MacFarlane for the new Naked Gun. He totally missed it.”
Regarding Neeson’s casting, he said: “They tried to replace Leslie Nielsen in the new Naked Gun, and you can’t replace him. No one else can do that.”
He also took issue with the budget, saying: “You shouldn’t spend too much money on comedies, and one of our rules is about technical pizzazz. Big budgets and comedy are opposites, and in the new Naked Gun, you could see that they spent a lot of money on scenes full of technical pizzazz while trying to copy our style.”
It should be noted that, according to The Numbers, the last Leslie Nielsen instalment, 1994’s Naked Gun 33 1/3, cost $30million (£22.7million) to make, which with inflation would cost be just under $66million (£50million) today, eclipsing the budget for the new film.
When discussing why the reboot happened, Zucker claimed: “Everybody’s in it for the money now, and that feels like the only reason why they wanted to do a new Naked Gun.”
Zucker was not the only original creative to criticise the new movie. In 2022, after the film was announced, Priscilla Presley spoke out about the casting of Liam Neeson. The star of all three Zucker movies said it would be impossible to replace Nielsen, remarking: “It’s hard to believe anyone else could be Frank Drebin and play that role.”
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