Original ‘Naked Gun’ director David Zucker says Liam Neeson reboot “totally missed”
Naked Gun director David Zucker has again criticised the reboot, starring Liam Neeson, claiming it “totally missed”.
Zucker co-wrote all three of the original Naked Gun trilogy and also directed the first two movies in the series. However, he was not involved in 2025’s The Naked Gun, directed by Akiva Schaffer with Seth MacFarlane also serving as a producer.
Now, in a new interview with Woman’s World, Zucker has said of the new film, which was well received and a box office success, “We originated our own style—and we did that so well that it looks easy, evidently. People started copying it, like [producer] Seth MacFarlane for the new Naked Gun. He totally missed it.”
He also criticised the film for having too big of a budget, claiming, “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.”
Zucker then said that the film was only made for financial reasons which he believes is a wider issue in Hollywood, stating, “Everybody’s in it for the money now, and that feels like the only reason why they wanted to do a new Naked Gun“.
He also criticised the casting of Neeson, stating, “They tried to replace Leslie Nielsen in the new Naked Gun, and you can’t replace him. No one else can do that.”
This isn’t the first time that Zucker has been critical of the reboot, and revealed he had no intentions to see the film, which has seemingly changed.
He remarked, “I’m not gonna see it, but I don’t see any of the sequels that were of my material done by other people, and that’s fine. I’ve told Akiva [Schaffer] that I have no intention to see it.”
The Naked Gun achieved over $100 million at the box office, which is a huge total for a comedy movie in 2025 in the current cinematic landscape.
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