Neeson and Anderson Team Up in New Naked Gun

There’s no better time to dust off a stunt man’s pension plan than when you’re pummeling would-be assassins and high-kicking Nazis for the umpteenth time. Welcome to the farcical wonderland of The Naked Gun, where fart jokes meet firearm puns meet unintended homicide, and the gun that got away might just have been a broomstick.

Nielsen’s slapstick detective first graced movie theaters back in 1988, with The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, and its indelible “put the lotion in the basket” sketch. Drebin’s last-minute attempts to stop the assassination of Queen Elizabeth II in the U.S. spawned two more Naked Gun installments. The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) sent Drebin on a trail to find a nefarious professor out to kidnap the world’s leading nuclear scientist. And 1994’s Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult featured Drebin coming out of retirement to foil a bomber’s plot to blow up the Academy Awards.

The franchise went quiet after that, though the spirit of Police Squad remained present and accounted for. In 2013, Paramount rekindled interest in Drebin with a reboot and a new lead, The Office’s Ed Helms. “Frank Drebin, no relation,” was set to appear in the farcical crime-comedy that was set in contemporary times. But that version of The Naked Gun failed to take off, with original producer/director David Zucker declining to work on a “copy of a copy,” while also throwing shade at the decision to reboot the series entirely. “It would be inferior. A lesser movie,” Zucker said in a 2013 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. “I like the word legacy for it.”

A screenplay that featured Drebin’s son as a secret agent was reworked in 2017, though the franchise still lay dormant without Zucker’s involvement, until Seth MacFarlane came on as a producer in 2021. That’s when Liam Neeson got involved.

The Irish actor, best known for romantic dramas such as Love Actually and Schindler’s List, reprises his role as Frank Drebin Jr., son of the deceased detective from the original Police Squad, for the new Naked Gun installment in a “legacy sequel.” In a recent interview with Access Hollywood, Neeson said he was first approached about the role during his casting for Love. It would be over 20 years later, though, before Drebin’s ghostly next of kin made its first public appearance.

Joining Neeson in the updates reboot are the likes of Paul Walter Hauser as Captain Ed Hocken, Jr., Drebin Sr.’s protégé and partner who has both seen better days, and Pamela Anderson as Beth, a femme fatale whose brother has been murdered. Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, CCH Pounder, Busta Rhymes, and Eddy Yu also join Neeson’s small crew in this particular parody squad.

The film’s first teaser trailer, which was released in April, left fans cautiously optimistic. David Zucker, who’s made no secret of his distaste towards the project without his involvement, took to TMZ to confess that he had only “one regret after watching the trailer: I can’t unsee it.” However, there are reasons to be cheerful. Neeson seems game, slapping down an attacker and pulling a Taken-adjacent swagger in a gun-related innuendo that is both crude and clever. “Once you kill a man for revenge,” he says with a straight face, “there’s no going back.” He then proceeds to disembowel the man by pulling off his arms to use as weapons. “A voice in your head saying over and over ‘That was awesome,’” the character adds. Later, as Frank and Ed Jr. get misty-eyed in front of plaques commemorating their fathers’ past, Neeson can be heard saying, “Did they get an Emmy for these things?” Classic.

The Naked Gun plot, such as it is, is driven by an attempt by Beth (Anderson) to enlist Drebin Jr.’s help in solving the murder of her brother; should Drebin fail, Police Squad will be shut down. Typical of any Police Squad film, not a shred of that is to be taken seriously (the culprit in question says he served 20 years for “man’s laughter”). When one of Drebin’s officers corrects him that it was, in fact, “manslaughter,” he quips, “Must have been quite the joke.”

Sure to tickle the nostalgic funny bone, Frank Jr. slides his police badge back into his pocket while commandeering a coffee shop bathroom stall for “police business,” before parroting his dead father in a somber police squad memorial to “protect and serve, protect and serve, protect and serve.”

Wide-release The Naked Gun will land in theaters on August 1, 2025.