Liam Neeson Channels Slapstick in New Naked Gun

The distinct whiff of splashy slapstick crime-solving is wafting through the summer blockbuster air. The Naked Gun, a long-running spoof comedy franchise famous for its irreverent humor and Rube Goldberg-like caper plots, has just been greenlit for a new film, to be released August 1, 2025. This time, however, it’s not Leslie Nielsen taking the case but Liam Neeson, who will play the son of Frank Drebin, a late, great crime fighter, in what is being billed as a “legacy sequel.”

The first Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! was released in 1988 and quickly found its place in the pantheon of goofs-filled crime comedies. The film starred Nielsen as the innumerate and accident-prone but earnest Detective Frank Drebin, and followed him as he attempted to foil an assassination plot against Queen Elizabeth II during her state visit to the United States. The ludicrous gags and flint-faced delivery both charmed critics and earned big box office, setting the stage for two more sequels. The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, released in 1991, saw Drebin battle a plot to kidnap the world’s greatest nuclear scientist, while Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, released in 1994, had Drebin coming out of retirement to stop a bomb plot against the Academy Awards.

Since the third film, though, the series had struggled to find traction. In 2013, Paramount announced a reboot that would star The Office star Ed Helms as “Frank Drebin, no relation.” But despite some fanfare, that project never got off the ground. In 2017, David Zucker, producer and director of the first two Naked Gun films, distanced himself from the project, arguing a reboot could only be “inferior” to the original films. He did, however, help retool a script with Drebin’s son as a secret agent, but that film never found financing, either.

It wasn’t until 2021 that the project had new life breathed into it again—this time with Seth MacFarlane set to helm and without Zucker attached. And that’s when Liam Neeson entered the picture, cast as Frank Drebin Jr., a lieutenant in the police force in the modern-day spoof.

The Wide Cast of Characters

Paul Walter Hauser is also on board, as Captain Ed Hocken, Jr., the son of Drebin Sr.’s long-time partner, while Pamela Anderson joins the cast as the femme fatale Beth, a woman whose brother has been murdered, setting up the key plot point that will drive the heart of the mystery at the center of the film. Also in the cast are Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, CCH Pounder, Busta Rhymes, and Eddy Yu, though what their characters might be is, as yet, unclear.

Reaction to the first teaser trailer, released in April, was…mixed. David Zucker, of course, had some harsh words for the trailer after viewing it, telling TMZ that the experience left him “mortified” and that “I can’t unsee it.” But there are a couple of silver linings fans can take comfort in. For one, Neeson is, at least on his terms, fully getting into the screwball spirit, parodying his familiar deadpan “particular set of skills” iteration in his Taken films. In one part of the trailer, the actor says, “Once you kill a man for revenge, there’s no going back,” before ripping off the arms of a would-be mugger and starting to beat the man over the head with his assailant’s limbs. “A voice in your head saying over and over ‘That was awesome,’” he continues.

The teaser also features an expectedly maudlin nod to the franchise’s predecessor. In the scene, Frank and Ed Jr. tear up as they read from plaques commemorating their fathers in front of a Police Squad memorial.

Of course, the sequel isn’t all handkerchief territory. This is, after all, The Naked Gun. And while the plot, such as it is, is largely a vehicle for the movie’s meta-jokes (Beth, the aforementioned femme fatale, needs Drebin Jr. to solve the murder of her brother, or the Police Squad will be disbanded), it does have its singularly stupendous Naked Gun moments. In one moment, a murder suspect pleads that he spent 20 years in prison for “man’s laughter.” Drebin corrects him that he was sentenced for “manslaughter,” before commenting, deadpan, “Must have been quite the joke.”

Throwing together a crime-stopping robot out of an army of Stormtroopers might be a stretch for Frank and Ed Jr., but when it comes to commandeering a coffee shop bathroom for “police business” or saying deadpan one-liners with supreme self-seriousness, Neeson looks more than capable of taking the badge—or at least tumbling over it in the effort.

The humor is likely not to be for all audiences—it’s wide, often pun-filled, and gloriously, gloriously silly—but that’s what audiences loved about the original Naked Gun films in the first place. If this trailer is any indication, The Naked Gun 2025 is going to be a shot of nostalgia-fueled mindlessness just in time for the summer blockbuster season.