Original 'Naked Gun' director says he would not have cast Liam Neeson in reboot

Fox News

16-04-2025

The "Naked Gun" reboot starring Liam Neeson has generated a lot of excitement online, but one of the original film's directors isn't a fan.
"It's painful, but it's just it's not what I would have done," David Zucker told Fox News Digital.
"But you know, I don't want to just bash what they're doing, but I'd like to. But it's not what I would have done, it is not our style. It's strange seeing it."
Zucker directed the original 1988 comedy, "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!" starring Leslie Nielsen and co-written by his brother, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft.
The Zucker brothers and Abrahams, known by the acronym ZAZ, are also the comedy masterminds behind "Airplane!" "Top Secret!" and the "Police Squad" TV series.
The director admitted he doesn't want to see the "Naked Gun" reboot with Neeson, comparing it to when "Airplane II" came out, which did not involve ZAZ.
"Jim Abrahams said when we would do Q and A's and we'd be asked, 'Why haven't you ever seen 'Airplane II?' And Jim said, 'Well, if your daughter became a prostitute, would you go watch her work?'"
"'The Naked Gun' and 'Airplane,' these are our babies. And we spent a lot of time conceiving it, doing it. And then it was kind of a surprise to me when I was excluded from the remake."
Zucker continued, "I just assumed I would do it. We wrote a script. And then suddenly Seth MacFarlane came in with Liam Neeson, and it was big studio, big agency, big producer."
"Family Guy" creator MacFarlane is a producer on the reboot, directed by Lonely Island alum Akiva Schaffer, starring Neeson, Pamela Anderson and Paul Walter Hauser.
WATCH: ORIGINAL 'NAKED GUN' DIRECTOR SAYS IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO REPLACE LESLIE NIELSEN WITH LIAM NEESON IN REBOOT
Had he been involved, Zucker says he would not have cast Neeson.
"You can't replace Leslie Nielsen. That's the thing," he said.
Zucker added, "They were very sincere and in what they thought they were going to do. They want to do 'Naked Gun.' And these aren't bad people, they worship, they love 'Naked Gun,' 'Top Secret!,' 'Airplane!,' and Seth MacFarlane has done homages in 'Family Guy' and all this stuff, and it's very nice."
"He called me, and for 10 minutes he just told me how much he loved my movies. However, when I first heard that he was going to do it, I kind of applied hat in hand to help or to be involved. And he said, 'Not until we do the script.' He didn't want to meet with me. So that's his choice. All I can say is that's Hollywood."
According to Zucker, he and original "Naked Fun" co-writer Pat Proft wrote "our version of Naked Gun 4," more in keeping with the style of spoof ZAZ and Proft have been known for over the years, beginning with their Kentucky Fried Theater in Los Angeles, which evolved into their first film, "The Kentucky Fried Movie."
"We learned there are rules, and we wrote a book called 'Surely You Can't Be Serious' and it's the true story of 'Airplane!' and we've put in it the 15 rules of comedy, our comedy. I'm not going to tell the Wayans brothers or Mike Myers what to do, even Seth. I wouldn't tell him how to do 'Family Guy,' he's obviously good at it, or 'Ted.' But what we do is very specific, and just being a fan doesn't mean that you can do it."
"Remember those ads for kids' things in the '60s? It says, 'Kids don't try this at home?' That's what I would say, but it's too late, this thing is coming out."
The trailer for the reboot showcases Neeson as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., son of Nielsen's character in the original franchise, making the film both a reboot and sequel at the same time.
WATCH: 'NAKED GUN' DIRECTOR SHARES HIS PLANS FOR LEGACY SEQUEL THAT DIFFER FROM LIAM NEESON LED REBOOT
Zucker says his and Proft's script, along with Mike McManus, "was not even a cop movie" and would have taken "a fresh approach."
"It was 'Naked Gun,' but it's a spoof of 'Mission Impossible,' 'The Bourne Identity' and Bond, with the son of Drebin, who's a young guy. It would have been Andy Samberg. We were doing a young cast and a fresh approach. Don't try to replace Leslie Nielsen. It's just another old guy, no matter how good they are."
Representatives for Neeson and MacFarlane did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Zucker and his team's specificity in their comedy stylings led to the discovery of a young Val Kilmer, who made his feature film debut as Nick Rivers, an Elvis-like pop star in "Top Secret!"
"Jerry and Jim and I were casting 'Top Secret!' and this was in mid-1983, and we couldn't find a Nick Rivers that we wanted. We were just tearing our hair out," he recalled. "So finally, our casting director, Suzy Jacobson, suggested, well, there's this actor who's in this play called 'Slab Boys' in New York. So, we hopped on a plane, and we saw the play off Broadway with Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Val Kilmer. And we thought he was great."
He added, "I mean, I don't remember much about the play, but I thought he [was a] very charismatic, handsome guy. I would date him, but you know, that's another story."
ZAZ had Kilmer audition, and they thought he was great, and then the young actor did a version of the Elvis tune "Turn Me Loose," and that sold them.
"The way he did it was funny," Zucker said. "He just, he blew us away."
Zucker recalled Kilmer being "a little uncomfortable" in the first few weeks of shooting and later realized part of the issue came down to the character.
"Val was this Juilliard-trained actor, and we were doing the silliest movie. He had to co-star with a cow with boots on. It was crazy," he said.
Kilmer's girlfriend at the time, Cher, also wasn't very confident in the film.
"Cher would come out of the set, very nice lady, but she kept telling him this is a monumentally stupid movie. It's going to flop at the box office. I mean, never mind that she was right, it was still annoying to me that she was putting this stuff in his ear."
Though the movie wasn't a huge box-office success, it's become a beloved cult classic, and there was no bad blood between Kilmer and the team.
"I don't go to the Hollywood parties, but I would run into him on occasion every year or two. And we would always say hello. And he had fond memories of me, maybe not of the movie," Zucker said.
WATCH: VAL KILMER'S 'TOP SECRET!' DIRECTOR RECALLS CASTING HIM IN HIS DEBUT FILM
He added he'd heard a story about a fan telling Kilmer during a Q&A session that "Top Secret!" was their favorite movie, and Kilmer quipped, "It's my least favorite."
"Top Secret!" wasn't ZAZ's first movie, but Zucker feels the team learned some lessons from the experience.
He recalled Abrahams figuring out years later that Kilmer's discomfort with the character was "our fault."
"We took the wrong lessons from 'Airplane!' which was you fill 80 minutes of a movie with jokes, and you got it," Zucker explained.
"What we learned, and this is one of the things that you learn from – I mean, I'm old enough to have learned something – you need to build a character. You have to have your main lead have a character who's got an arc, so he's got to have a problem, and he has to learn something in the second act, and he resolves it in the third act," the 77-year-old said.
He explained that in "Airplane!" there was a plot and character arc for the lead, Robert Hayes, but that it was parodied from an existing plot from the film "Zero Hour" and they didn't have the same template and rules to follow for "Top Secret!"
"Every movie has been a great experience, but mostly we learned lessons from doing the wrong things, and we were able to put those into the rules, which the people who are doing 'Naked Gun,' they don't know the rules. But I think they're nice people anyways."