Neeson’s Goofy Turn Might Be the Surprise of the Summer

The laugh track from Police Squad! is coming back. Yes, Leslie Nielsen’s stoic, slow-talking, accident-prone detective is long-retired, but the world-famous spoof comedy franchise he made famous in the early 1980s is returning with the release of The Naked Gun in 2025. The new film will arrive August 1st and, true to form, won’t be helmed by Nielsen or even his most famous Naked Gun opportunities, Frank Drebin. This is a “legacy sequel” with Liam Neeson as Drebin’s son, reprising a character he’s played since 2022’s trailer and, in all likelihood, lampooning his Taken fame.

As the trailer reminds us, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! Launched in 1988 and featured Nielsen as Drebin, the well-meaning buffoon who just wants to do his job (mostly by sitting around) while looking smart. The chief premise of the original was Drebin’s mishaps as he tries to stop an assassination plot against Queen Elizabeth II during her state visit to the United States. The first film’s success led to a sequel, Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear in 1991, this time with the plot to kidnap the world’s leading nuclear scientist, and a Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, in which Drebin comes out of retirement to foil a bombing plot against the Academy Awards in 1994.

After Naked Gun 33⅓, there were no further sequels. A reboot was announced in 2013 by Paramount with The Office star Ed Helms as “Frank Drebin, no relation.” The project continued to experience delays over the next few years, and David Zucker, the Naked Gun producer and director of the first two films, avoided being involved due to a creative aversion and a desire not to overstep Nielsen’s legacy. He felt that any reboot would be “inferior” to the originals. In 2017, Zucker began working on rewrites for Drebin’s son-as-a-secret-agent story before that project also fell apart.

In 2021, the reboot got a new life with Seth MacFarlane at the helm and without Zucker’s involvement, and in 2023, Liam Neeson was cast as Frank Drebin Jr., a lieutenant in the police force, who is charged with solving crimes just as incompetently as his father. In this way, the new film will mirror Naked Gun 2½, where Frank’s path crosses with Captain Ed Hocken, Jr. Captain Ed is played by Paul Walter Hauser, himself amid a busy year with a new role as Mole Man in the upcoming Fantastic Four: First Steps. The owner of Hocken’s firearm is Pamela Anderson as Beth, the film’s femme fatale. Her brother has been murdered, and she’s working with Drebin Jr. to discover who did it before his continued incompetence causes the Police Squad to be decommissioned.

The cast also includes Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, CCH Pounder, Busta Rhymes, and Eddy Yu.

In April, a teaser for the film was released and became mired in David Zucker’s usual bitterness and sentimentality toward the franchise as it was reviewed and panned publicly. Speaking to TMZ about the teaser, Zucker lamented, “I can’t unsee it. I regret watching it.”

For fans, there is still cause for excitement in the upcoming release, not least of which is the fact that Neeson, who should know better, is an actor already associated with gravitas. Neeson is channeling Nielsen/Drebin to the fullest in the new teaser by parodying the same stoic, particular set of skills that Drebin hasn’t had since before his character was born in the Taken series. In one section of the trailer, Drebin Jr. states in all seriousness, “Once you kill a man for revenge, there’s no going back.” He then proceeds to rip the arms off an attacker and beat him over the head with them. “A voice in your head saying over and over ‘That was awesome,’” he concludes.

The most touching moment in the trailer—and one that both mourns the death of Drebin and cements his son’s cinematic fate—features Frank and Ed Jr. breaking down while clutching commemorative plaques honoring their respective fathers.

There’s also the silliness. As will be the case with any comedy attempting to recontextualize the material of an original classic with new characters, some laughs will be good and some not so much. But in typical Naked Gun fashion, that’s all in service to this: Ed Hocken, Jr., is trying to solve a murder. Beth (Anderson) comes to him for help, promising a job with the New York Police Department if he’s successful. If he doesn’t solve the murder, the Police Squad is shut down, and his promotion hopes vanish. The chief suspect is discovered in a scene with the predictable, “I served 20 years for man’s laughter.” This prompts Drebin Jr. to correct him: “Manslaughter, dummy. Must have been quite the joke.”

If the trailer is any indication, The Naked Gun is back and doesn’t mind getting real stupid with it. From shooting suspects by commandeering a coffee shop bathroom to self-consciously whiffing on one-liners while shrugging with that patented Drebin nonchalance, Neeson is ready to wear the badge or fall in his attempt.

The laughs are broad and pun-heavy, but then again, so were the original Naked Guns, and that’s the sense here. As a comedic franchise, the Naked Gun made no pretense and embraced the silliness that came along with a central character who often reminded people he was in on the joke, even as his colleagues struggled to keep up. These elements are present in The Naked Gun 2025, and fans are likely to give it a warm welcome into theaters this summer.