If you had grown up with the original “Naked Gun” trilogy (1988-1994) like writer/director Akiva Schaffer, chances are you, too, would’ve thought a 2025 franchise reboot was a horrible idea.
Schaffer, 47, watched the original “Naked Gun” countless times in middle and high school, but his “trepidation and pessimism” when he got a call about the remake went beyond the typical kneejerk nostalgia to protect a cherished childhood memory. The “SNL” and Lonely Island alum is as serious a student of spoofs as anyone in comedy, and it was his considerable professional opinion that a reboot was a fool’s errand.
“I definitely thought it was a bad idea,” said Schaffer when he was a guest on this week’s episode of IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast to discuss his new “The Naked Gun.” “The first movie, specifically, is a perfect movie. It’s almost a magic trick. Every time you think you figured out what they did to make it work in terms of the rules, the next scene breaks that rule in a way — somehow, their instincts were so good as to what the audience cared about and didn’t care about.”
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Schaffer said he took the meeting with Paramount out of “morbid curiosity,” wondering what the studio’s plans were for the respected property.
“The thing that changed my mind was them saying Liam Neeson was interested,” said Schaffer.
One of the keys to success for brothers David and Jerry Zucker, along with Jim Abrahams —the ZAZ producing-directing trio behind “Airplane,” “Top Secret,” and the “Naked Gun” films— was the casting of dramatic actors in Hollywood’s first spoof films.
“It’s not that they’re playing it straight; it’s that they’re playing it real,” said Schaffer. “When people think of playing it straight, they think of playing it serious, meaning they could get very humorless and flat, and it’s not that. It’s that you’re playing it like you’re an actor who is so dumb, they don’t know that what they’re saying is crazy. That it’s so genuine.”
Schaffer is not alone in believing no one was better at this than the original “Naked Gun” star Leslie Nielsen, but more importantly, stepping into his Detective Frank Drebin’s shoes would be a mistake.
“Leslie Nielsen is irreplaceable, one of one, as they say,” said Schaffer. “Any actor that would be trying to do a Leslie Nielsen impression of any sort would be a failing idea.”
The reason the possibility of Neeson intrigued Schaffer, opening the door a crack to the potential of doing the reboot? A four-minute bit the “Taken” star did in Warwick Davis, Stephen Merchant, and Ricky Gervais’ 2011 comedy series “Life’s Too Short.”
It’s a well-known clip in comedy circles that Schaffer had watched countless times. In the scene, Neeson plays a severe version of himself, the dramatic actor wanting to try his hand at comedy, but seemingly unaware that AIDS, cancer, famine, and his “Schindler’s List” preparation aren’t suitable comedic premises to riff off. You can watch the scene below.
“It’s all in that clip. He’s playing Liam Neeson in it, but it’s clearly a caricature. That’s an amalgamation of every action movie he’s made for the last 10 years, and he’s playing it so serious and so humorless and saying crazy shit,” said Schaffer. “That’s also why when they said Liam Neeson, I went, ‘Oh,’ because when you see that clip, you’re like, what an amazing untapped resource. The leading-man, old-school gravitas — that doesn’t exist anymore, but also [he] hasn’t used his power for comedy yet, almost ever, except that clip and a cameo in ‘Ted 2.’”
Schaffer pointed to other handsome leading men, like Alec Baldwin and Jon Hamm, who had successfully made the pivot to comedy, but afterwards kept one career foot firmly planted in the comedy world.
“Liam never did that pivot. He’s just really rare in that way,” said Schaffer. “It let me know that we wouldn’t be doing an impersonation.”
With Neeson, there would be no need to try to replicate or impersonate Nielsen’s work in the 1980s and ’90s films. Neeson would instead draw from his own well-established, onscreen dramatic persona.
“What you see in that Gervais clip, what he showed me, he’s willing to poke fun at this iconic persona he’s been developing,” said Schaffer. “I could be like, ‘Oh, that’s who he is. That’s his version of it.’ It’s not Leslie’s version. That specifically is why Liam opened it up, because I could see a new version happening.”
At the beginning of Schaffer’s 2025 “Naked Gun,” it’s established that Neeson’s Detective Drebin is the son of the Nielsen character. His character honors his father’s legacy, from which he could draw lessons, but he is his own man living in his own time. It’s a tidy analogy for how Neeson’s presence allowed Schaffer to approach the original films.
A Paramount Pictures release, “The Naked Gun” is now in theaters.
To hear Akiva Schaffer‘s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
