Naked Gun Reboot Blends Nostalgia With New Laughs

It’s been 30 years since Detective Frank Drebin last bumbled his way through the dangerous crime-fighting business, but for the first time in over a decade, we have new information on what the future holds for the spoofs spoof comedy franchise. The Naked Gun is set for a long-awaited reboot, arriving in theaters on August 1, 2025, with Liam Neeson taking the lead in what will be a “legacy sequel” with Neeson playing Frank Drebin’s son.

The original The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! Premiered in 1988 and quickly became a classic crime-comedy hit. The film stars Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin, a well-meaning, if highly accident-prone, police detective, who is assigned to protect Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to the United States after learning of a plan to assassinate the monarch. Drebin’s final act of heroism in the film is to release the queen’s stooge pigeon, which lets him foil the evil criminal plot. The film was a hit with its relentlessly corny and surreal brand of humor, deadpan delivery, and led to two sequels. 1991’s Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear sees Drebin trying to keep track of a missing top nuclear scientist after he is framed for his colleague’s murder. And 1994’s Naked Gun 33½: The Final Insult finds Drebin coming out of retirement to stop a plot to detonate a nuclear bomb at the upcoming Academy Awards.

After the third film, the franchise fizzled. A reboot first came to Paramount in 2013, with The Office alum Ed Helms attached to star as “Frank Drebin, no relation.” The project fell apart, and partly at the behest of David Zucker, the original producer and director of the first two films, who declined to have anything to do with it, deeming any reboot of Police Squad! as “inferior” to the original. In 2017, Zucker got involved with a new draft of the franchise for a movie that was described as a mix of live-action and animation, with Drebin’s son being a secret agent, although this never moved forward.

It was only in 2021 that the project returned, this time with Seth MacFarlane returning at the helm, and without Zucker, that Liam Neeson signed on as Drebin Jr., a police lieutenant in his own right who bears a striking resemblance to his late father, both in looks and police workmanship.

Welcome New Faces

Alongside Neeson, Paul Walter Hauser will take up the mantle as Captain Ed Hocken, Jr., the son of Drebin Sr.’s longtime deputy and a police captain in his own right. Hauser was last seen in Fantastic Four: First Steps, playing the comic book supervillain Mole Man. Pamela Anderson is another face to welcome, playing the mysterious femme fatale Beth, who has her brother murdered, as a key part of the film’s central mystery. Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, CCH Pounder, Busta Rhymes, and Eddy Yu round out the cast.

The first teaser trailer was released in April, and while it was met with a lukewarm response, with David Zucker regretting watching the trailer and telling TMZ he “can’t unsee it.” Neeson does, however, seem to be in the right place. The Trailer, if nothing else, seems to show that Neeson is having a ball, with several nods to the franchise, including a serious self-parody of his iconic “particular set of skills” role in the Taken franchise. At one point, he shouts, “Once you kill a man for revenge, there’s no going back.” This line from the second Taken movie (The Darker The Grain) is undercut by him ripping his attacker’s arms off and beating him with them. “A voice in your head saying over and over ‘That was awesome,’” he adds in true Drebin fashion.

Other homages in the trailer see Frank and Ed Jr. getting teary in front of a plaque that pays tribute to their fathers. The film’s plot, while secondary to the sheer number of slapstick one-liners and cheap laughs, involves Beth, who has killed her brother as part of a master plan to get Drebin Jr.’s help to solve her murder. If he fails, Police Squad! It will be closed down. “I served 20 years for man’s laughter,” one suspect jokes as he’s being arrested. When Drebin corrects him, and he was imprisoned for “manslaughter,” Drebin retorts, “Must have been quite the joke.”

From using the police siren on a coffee shop to get to the bathroom himself so he can do “police business,” to delivering canned lines about refusing to leave the bathroom with “dead authority,” Neeson looks primed to take up Drebin’s mantle as this Police Squad! Takes on life.

Predictably, the humor might not be for everyone—pun-heavy, broadly drawn, and incredibly silly—but that was the point and also what fans adored about the original films. It certainly seems to be trying to recapture some of that mindless summer fun, and if the Trailer is anything to go by, it should fit the bill for summer 2025 very nicely.