Legacy Sequels Meet Comedy Nostalgia in The Naked Gun

You’ll soon be able to hear him a mile away. After a 33-year hiatus, the gloriously wacky trill of slapstick law enforcement is back. The Naked Gun is officially returning to theaters on August 1, 2025, according to the latest release date for the comedy franchise. The latest installment of the spoof, which follows an accident-prone detective as he repeatedly foils convoluted plots against the U.S. government, will once again star Leslie Nielsen’s bumbling but endearing Frank Drebin. Or, rather, it will star Liam Neeson, who will be playing Drebin’s son in the long-awaited “legacy sequel.”

Nielsen first assumed the role of police lieutenant Frank Drebin in 1988’s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, a subversive spoof that combined many of his earlier crime-film antics (Hercules, Final Countdown) with brand-new zany hijinks, including D-Day Landings meets I Love Lucy proportions of setup. Drebin first took on the task of preventing an assassination plot on Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to the U.S. government. The film was a hit, and after two sequels in the ’90s, the long arm of The Naked Gun franchise reached even further: it led to a two-season spinoff TV show (with Ron James as Frank Drebin) in 1995–1996.

Leslie Nielsen died in 2010, the same year he appeared in a reality TV commercial for Panadol, in which a sickly Nielsen plays a parallel world’s version of himself. The passing marked the end of the line for Drebin (for a while). A reboot was first teased by Paramount in 2013, with The Office star Ed Helms cast as “Frank Drebin, no relation.” But a script never materialized, partially due to David Zucker’s resistance to reviving the franchise. Producer-director Zucker, who helmed the first two Naked Gun films, refused to attach himself to the project until a satisfying script could be found (a task at which he was unable to contribute, but not before declining to direct out of respect to Nielsen). “There’s no way I can make a movie that would be as good as, or in my opinion even equal to, the first two films,” Zucker said at the time. “Therefore, I just turned it down. It’s just not gonna happen.”

Zucker dipped back into the Police Squad well briefly in 2017, when he wrote a treatment for another reboot in which Drebin’s son was a secret agent with the CIA. That version also went nowhere. It wasn’t until 2021 that the project came to fruition, minus Zucker, who passed the director’s reins to Seth MacFarlane. Enter Liam Neeson.

Meet Frank Drebin Jr.

So far, Neeson has spent his time with the Naked Gun 2025 franchise mostly playing detective himself, first as an undercover cop in a spoofy boxing ring in a trailer that debuted in April, and then at the supermarket in a recent sneak peek posted earlier this month. In the new clip, which you can see below, Drebin Jr. (Neeson) busts a perp in a parody grocery store, doleding out franchise fave one-liners like pearls of criminal justice. (“Stop cowering in the freezer section,” he growls at a suspect. “It’s unsanitary.”)

Neeson’s Drebin Jr. will be joined in the cast by Paul Walter Hauser as Captain Ed Hocken, Jr., the son of Drebin Sr.’s perennial partner Captain Ed Hocken. Hauser, best known for his roles in I, Tonya and Night Patrol, will also be seen as Mole Man in Fantastic Four: First Steps later this year. Pamela Anderson plays femme fatale Beth, whose brother has been killed, starting the mystery on which the film is based. She is also in cahoots with the wrong person, who the police ask Drebin for help solving his murder; if he can’t, the Police Squad will be disbanded. Co-starring Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, CCH Pounder, Busta Rhymes, and Eddy Yu, Naked Gun 2025 is a high-profile affair.

Fans of the original Naked Gun franchise might have mixed feelings about the forthcoming reboot. David Zucker, who had reconnected to the project, called out the April teaser trailer in an April interview with TMZ, claiming that he “instantly regretted” watching it and lamenting that “I can’t unsee it.” However, there are some things to smile about. The trailer shows Neeson as quite at home in the franchise’s screwball brand of parody, riffing on his own “particular set of skills” boner from the Taken films in one particularly brutal action beat. At one point, Frank screams, “Once you kill a man for revenge, there’s no going back,” before yanking off his attacker’s arms and clubbing him with them. “A voice in your head saying over and over ‘That was awesome,’” he finishes.

The trailer also marks what appears to be the inevitable pilgrimage to the site of Drebin’s father’s statue and plaque, the kind of moment guaranteed to produce tears in Frank Jr. and Ed Jr. over their fathers’ legacies.

Expect More of the Same

Plot is less of a factor in The Naked Gun movies than in-your-face one-liners, sight gags, and stock footage pasted together in surrealist assemblage. The plot of Naked Gun 2025, if it can be discerned from the trailer, seems to center on Beth’s brother, who has been killed, and Drebin Jr.’s efforts to solve the crime. If he fails to do so, then the Police Squad will be disbanded. As Drebin Jr. attempts to find the truth, he’s faced with characters who will say anything, like the character who claims to have spent 20 years in prison for “man’s laughter.” When Ed points out that the correct charge is “manslaughter,” Drebin retorts, “Must have been quite the joke.”

The odyssey will have Neeson and Hauser sharing tender and jokey moments both with one another and by themselves in big production numbers à la 1988’s original (minus some of the more contemporary choices of recent years, like a grocery store set where the most popular streaming service in the world, Nazima, sells groceries and detergent). We see Neeson shamelessly waltzing into a coffee shop bathroom with the line, “We’re doing some police business here,” before doing business with a suspect and someone holding a gun in a shot from another trailer. Later, he’s seen pummeling the antagonist with an oversized punch.

The comedy in Naked Gun 2025 is par for the course. It’s gross, it’s physical, and there’s nothing subtle about it. And that’s fine. It’s also a callback to the joyous absurdity of the original trilogy.