{"id":138988,"date":"2025-11-17T05:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T05:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/138988\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T05:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T05:37:07","slug":"original-naked-gun-director-slams-liam-neeson-led-reboot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/138988\/","title":{"rendered":"Original ‘Naked Gun’ Director Slams Liam Neeson-Led Reboot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDavid Zucker<\/a>, who helmed the first two Naked Gun<\/a> films, wasn\u2019t the biggest fan of the reboot, starring Liam Neeson<\/a> and Pamela Anderson. <\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a recent interview with Woman\u2019s World<\/a>, the filmmaker claimed the new film, The Naked Gun<\/a><\/a>, tried to replicate the spoof comedy style developed by Zucker, his brother Jerry and their partner Jim Abrahams, but \u201ctotally missed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy brother, Jerry, and our partner, Jim Abrahams, started doing spoof comedies 50 years ago, and we originated our own style \u2014 and we did that so well that it looks easy, evidently,\u201d Zucker explained. \u201cPeople started copying it, like Seth MacFarlane for the new\u00a0Naked Gun. He totally missed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Naked Gun was directed by Akiva Schaffer, but MacFarlane served as a producer. The reboot follows Neeson\u2019s Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Lt. Frank Drebin (played by the late Leslie Nielsen<\/a> in the original trilogy), who follows in his father\u2019s footsteps and works as a detective to solve a murder case and save his police department from closure.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey tried to replace Leslie Nielsen in the new\u00a0Naked Gun, and you can\u2019t replace him. No one else can do that,\u201d Zucker added.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Scary Movie 3 director also criticized the production budget for the new Naked Gun installment, which cost approximately\u00a0$42 million to make. While the original 1988 film reportedly had a budget of $15 million, that would equate to roughly $41 million today, once adjusted for inflation.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t spend too much money on comedies, and one of our rules is about technical pizzazz,\u201d Zucker said. \u201cBig budgets and comedy are opposites, and in the new\u00a0Naked Gun, you could see that they spent a lot of money on scenes full of technical pizzazz while trying to copy our style.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added, \u201cEverybody\u2019s in it for the money now, and that feels like the only reason why they wanted to do a new\u00a0Naked Gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tZucker directed 1988\u2019s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! and 1991\u2019s The Naked Gun 2\u00bd: The Smell of Fear, while Peter Segal helmed 1994\u2019s Naked Gun 33 1\/3: The Final Insult.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filmmaker previously told The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> that he had no plans to watch the reboot but saw the film\u2019s positive reception as a sign \u201cthere\u2019s a strong market for comedy in movie theaters, and spoof in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also noted that he wished Schaffer well, but declined an invitation from the director to see an early cut of it. \u201cI told him there\u2019s nothing I could do to help because it really isn\u2019t what I would have done,\u201d Zucker admitted. That\u2019s not to say that he didn\u2019t actually end up doing a good movie. But I don\u2019t think I could help with that.\u201d He had previously been outspoken about feeling burned<\/a> that he and other team members of the original film were not asked to be involved with the reboot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Zucker, who helmed the first two Naked Gun films, wasn\u2019t the biggest fan of the reboot, starring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,94597,156,24700,94598,111,139,69,8292],"class_list":{"0":"post-138988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-david-zucker","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-liam-neeson","12":"tag-naked-gun","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-the-naked-gun"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}