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The original Naked Gun director says the 2025 film “totally missed” the mark
Speaking to Woman’s World, David Zucker said the spoof style originated by he and his partners “looks easy, evidently”
“People started copying it, like Seth MacFarlane for the new Naked Gun,” Zucker added
The original Naked Gun director says that the producer of the 2025 film — Seth MacFarlane — “totally missed” the mark.
Speaking to Woman’s World, David Zucker — who directed the original Naked Gun (1988) film starring Leslie Nielsen — said of the new film, starring Liam Neeson: “My brother, Jerry, and our partner, Jim Abrahams, started doing spoof comedies 50 years ago, and we originated our own style—and we did that so well that it looks easy, evidently.”
“People started copying it, like Seth MacFarlane for the new Naked Gun,” Zucker added. “He totally missed it.”
The filmmaker added that, “there’s a certain method to the madness,” saying, “We had our 15 rules, and I’m teaching them in the hopes that if anybody tries to do a movie like this again, they’ll do it right.”
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Frank Masi/Paramount Pictures
Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. in The Naked Gun from Paramount Pictures.
Part of his criticism, he said, stemmed from the big budget nature of the newer film.
“You shouldn’t spend too much money on comedies, and one of our rules is about technical pizzazz. Big budgets and comedy are opposites, and in the new Naked Gun, you could see that they spent a lot of money on scenes full of technical pizzazz while trying to copy our style,” he told Woman’s World.
In an earlier interview withThe Hollywood Reporter published Monday, Aug. 4, Zucker had said that he had no plans to see the movie, but added, “I don’t see any of the sequels that were of my material done by other people, and that’s fine.”
“I’ve told [director Akiva Schaffer] that I have no intention to see it,” he continued. “He actually invited me to come see an early cut of it, but I told him there’s nothing I could do to help because it really isn’t what I would have done.”
“That’s not to say that he didn’t actually end up doing a good movie. But I don’t think I could help with that,” Zucker added.
Elsewhere in his interview with THR, Zucker — who also directed 1980’s Airplane! as well as The Naked Gun 2½ (1991), and wrote Naked Gun 33⅓ (1994) — told the outlet that he was offered an executive producer credit on the new Naked Gun movie, but ultimately turned it down because “I won’t take credit on anything that I didn’t work on from the beginning.”
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The Naked Gun, Leslie Nielsen
Zucker did say that MacFarlane reached out about the film, telling THR the Family Guy creator “spent the first 10 minutes telling me how much he loved Airplane!, The Naked Gun and Top Secret!“
“I can’t get mad at anyone who will tell me what a genius I am. That was a good conversation,” Zucker added. “I was glad that Seth called, but I told him politely, ‘Good luck, but I can’t put my name on this.’ [But] everything happens for a reason.”
The new Naked Gun movie starred Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the late Nielsen’s Frank Drebin. Making quite the dynamic entrance as sultry femme fatale Beth is Pamela Anderson.
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