If you were to compile a list of the best parody movies ever made, you would be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t include “The Naked Gun” on it. The hilarious riff on procedural cop shows initially started out as “Police Squad!,” a hilarious six-episode television comedy series from David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker whose only crime was being ahead of its time. Although the triage had no such luck making it play to audiences on the small screen, the short-lived series proved to be incredibly successful in movie theaters in the form of 1988’s “The Naked Gun,” which brought back Leslie Nielsen to reprise his role as the bumbling Detective Lt. Frank Drebin.

Advertisement

The David Zucker-directed film not only jumpstarted Nielsen’s comedy career after his memorable role in “Airplane!,” but it also led to two sequels: “The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear” and “The Naked Gun 33 ⅓: The Final Insult.” These movies live and breathe on Nielsen’s impeccable comedic timing, but it was only a matter of time until someone would try to revive the series. A fourth installment had been in the pipeline for over a decade until it was officially announced in 2022 that Drebin would be infiltrating movie theaters once again, this time in the guise of Liam Neeson.

Moving forward with a reboot of “The Naked Gun” without the original creative team sounds like a recipe for disaster, but there’s actually reason to be cautiously optimistic based on what we’ve seen so far in the teaser trailer.

Advertisement

“The Naked Gun” is currently slated for an August 1, 2025 release date, arriving in quite the summer movie ecosystem. That weekend will also see the release of the animated comedy sequel “The Bad Guys 2” and the Dave Franco-Alison Brie body horror comedy “Together.” By then, theaters will likely still be riding the waves of Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which hit theaters on July 25. If “The Naked Gun” garners good reviews and a strong word of mouth, the top of August could prove to be a wise choice as the only comedies it has to compete against throughout the month are “Freakier Friday” on August 8 and “The Toxic Avenger” on August 29.

Advertisement

While the hilarious teaser trailer reflects the kind of gags you could expect from “The Naked Gun,” its plot is not one of them. You may not think the story of a “Naked Gun” movie is all that important, considering they exist in this surreal kind of unreality where anything can happen, but part of the reason why these films work is because there is a central conflict guiding the rapid-fire gags.

Advertisement

In the 1988 film, Ricardo Montalbán plays a wealthy LA businessman who concocts a scheme to have a total stranger assassinate Queen Elizabeth II through mind control. “The Smell of Evil” sees Robert Goulet as a suave oil executive trying to thwart the rise of renewable energy. Lastly, “The Final Insult” makes sure to go out with a bang as “Tremors” star Fred Ward plays a terrorist who aims to cause a great blow to the United States by setting off a bomb at the Academy Awards.

All three films are centered around some kind of evil scheme that Drebin just happens to fall into on account of it involving his series love interest Jane Spencer, played by Priscilla Presley. Needless to say, Neeson’s Det. Drebin Jr. will likely encounter a similar “save the world” plot.

Advertisement

When it was announced that “The Naked Gun” would return, no one knew whether it would be a remake of the original film or another legacy sequel. Neeson’s casting could have swung the pendulum either way, but the tremendous gag at the end of the teaser trailer confirms that the action star is indeed playing Det. Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Nielsen’s character. It’s the perfect way to go about things, as it gives Neeson the room to play a similar subversion of a serious actor taking on a comedic performance without overshadowing Nielsen’s performance. (There was a point in 2013 where it appeared like Ed Helms was going to play a version of Drebin, but it never came together.)

Advertisement

Paul Walter Hauser, meanwhile, rather fittingly plays a descendant of George Kennedy’s Captain Ed Hocken. The only other performance we have anything to go off of is “The Last Showgirl” star Pamela Anderson, who’s credited as a femme fatale character named Beth (via PEOPLE). Among the other confirmed cast members we know about at this time are Kevin Durand (“Abigail”), Danny Huston (“Yellowstone”), CCH Pounder (“NCIS: New Orleans”) and Busta Rhymes (“Halloween: Resurrection”). Whether the officer playing the son of OJ Simpson’s Det. Nordberg will actually be a real character or a hilarious one-off joke about the disgraced actor’s legacy with the series remains to be seen.

The creative team of “The Naked Gun” seems to be sticking together, as Schaffer, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand are attached to the project as co-writers. Prior to this film, both Gregor and Mand co-wrote “Chip n’ Dale,” in addition to the bafflingly weird “Dolittle” remake starring Robert Downey Jr. The pairing have also written a few episodes of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and over 50 episodes of the CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.” Knowing Schaffer is in the writer’s room, however, gives me more confidence than if Gregor and Mand were doing it themselves.

Advertisement

Erica Huggins, Daniel M. Stillman and Schaffer are all attached as producers, but even more interestingly, so is Seth MacFarlane. His involvement shouldn’t come as a surprise considering he’s not only worked with Neeson on the big screen in a comedic context with “A Million Ways to Die in the West” and “Ted 2” but has made it pretty clear he’s a big fan of the original film, going so far as to recreate the entire opening sequence of the first film on an episode of “Family Guy.”

Yes, as we mentioned before, there’s a brief, yet hilarious teaser trailer that gave us our first glimpse of the new Police Squad. While initially premiering at Cinemacon, the teaser was released online not too long afterwards. The sight gag of a little girl ripping off her mask to reveal Neeson gave me a good laugh before the action star goes into his “Taken” routine, stabbing some heist thieves with a sharpened lollipop. But what really sold the humor of this reboot is the lineup of cops honoring their dead fathers, before ending on a deeply funny moment of silence when it shows the descendant of O.J. Simpson’s character Norberg shaking his head in disapproval.

Advertisement

It’s currently unknown whether the MPAA will hit “The Naked Gun” with a PG-13 or R rating, but there’s a good argument for either one happening. All three of the previous “Naked Gun” movies have been PG-13, so it wouldn’t be too far out of left field to keep with tradition as to not alienate a younger demographic. There’s nothing in the teaser that indicates a harder turn, barring a few moments of CG blood spatter where Drebin Jr. stabs one of the bank heist criminals in the chest. Either way, Schaffer will likely be able to handle it considering his films range across the ratings spectrum with a PG (“Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers”), PG-13 (“Hot Rod”) and an R (“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping”).

Advertisement