From Action Star to Comedy Cop: Neeson Leads Naked Gun

The sound of small-time crooks clattering down emergency staircases is returning to the cinema after a 30-year hiatus. The Naked Gun is returning to theaters with a new installment in the beloved spoof comedy franchise. New footage and the film’s official August 1, 2025, release date were shared in a new teaser trailer. This time, it’s Liam Neeson, not Leslie Nielsen, who will be fronting the bonkers parody. Neeson will be taking on the role of Frank Drebin’s son for the “legacy sequel.”

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! was released in 1988 and cemented itself as one of the best and most beloved crime comedies of all time. It introduced the character of Detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), a droll police detective with both a heart of gold and all the luck of a butcher’s chopping block. He was also a terrible detective, spending most of his investigation time suffering from one bad pratfall after another. He began the original film by foiling a plan to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II during her tour of the United States.

The absurd antics of Drebin, Festrunk’s brother, and young cop Eduardo López (George Kennedy) made audiences fall in love with the film. They returned in 1991 for The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, in which Drebin combats an evil plot to kidnap a leading nuclear scientist. The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult was released in 1994, with Drebin returning from retirement to foil yet another plot by dastardly villains to bomb the Academy Awards.

It would be another 27 years until audiences were treated to another round of laughter as a result of the ineptitude of Police Squad. In 2013, Paramount Pictures rebooted the franchise by casting The Office star Ed Helms as “Frank Drebin, no relation.” The rights would change hands, and the project was slowly put on hold as David Zucker, producer and director of the first two installments, repeatedly insisted the reboot be abandoned. Zucker had distanced himself from The Naked Gun by the time the reboot was announced in 2013, stating that any update to his original series would be “inferior.” He worked on a version for a time in 2017, reworking a script where Drebin’s son was a secret agent for government agencies around the world. That film has since stalled, as Zucker and MacFarlane have parted ways. This was the state of the film by the time Seth MacFarlane was brought on to direct and star Liam Neeson as Drebin Jr.

A Familiar Cast

Costarring with Neeson in the Police Squad reboot is Paul Walter Hauser, who will be playing Captain Ed Hocken, Jr., the son of Drebin Sr’s longtime partner. If you are familiar with Paul Walter Hauser, you are not wrong. Paul was recently cast in the new Fantastic Four film Fantastic Four: First Steps in the role of Mole Man. Pamela Anderson will be playing femme fatale Beth, who approaches Drebin to help solve the murder of her brother and save the Police Squad from being shut down. Other cast members include Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, CCH Pounder, Busta Rhymes, and Eddy Yu.

The first official teaser trailer was released in April and received a lukewarm response. Even Zucker criticized the film on the basis of the teaser. Zucker, whose family maintained the rights to the franchise following his father’s passing in 2014, told TMZ that he regretted watching the clip, and that “I can’t unsee it.” It’s not all bad news, though. From what we see in the trailer, it seems Neeson is having a ton of fun channeling the hyper-screwball tone that made the franchise a cult hit. He even seems to be riffing off his own serious, tongue-in-cheek “particular set of skills” Taken character, screaming “Once you kill a man for revenge, there’s no going back!” before cutting off an attacker’s arms with his bare hands and clubbing the two goons with them. “A voice in your head saying over and over ‘That was awesome,’” he deadpans.

Neeson also manages to pay affectionate tribute to the franchise’s film origins. In one shot, Frank and Ed Jr. tear up while in front of a plaque commemorating their fathers’ Police Squad legacy. There are plenty of silly moments to be had outside of Neeson’s parodying, too. On its face, the plot seems entirely tangential to the gags that made these films so endearing. In the original Naked Gun film, Drebin, again starring Nielsen, was being pulled into the case by a mysterious femme fatale, Peggy Wise (Priscilla Presley). In the 2025 version, it is Beth who needs Drebin’s help to keep Police Squad from being disbanded by the city’s Police Commissioner if they are not able to solve her brother’s murder. When one of the murder suspects says he did time for “man’s laughter,” Drebin corrects him, “manslaughter, man!” he deadpans. “Must have been quite the joke.”

From commandeering a coffee shop bathroom to complete “police business” to casually tossing insult after insult to his suspect while they are tied to a chair with duct tape, Neeson seems ready to take the badge and save the day by tripping over his own feet.

The style of humor may not be to everyone’s taste, especially when it goes after one’s prior roles. It’s extremely broad, pun-heavy, and for lack of a better term, stupid. But isn’t that why we love these films in the first place? If this trailer is any indication, The Naked Gun 2025 will be a great dose of nostalgia, if not of mindless comedy, just in time for summer.