Lt. Frank Drebin is back on the case. Paramount Pictures is moving ahead with a long-gestating remake of Naked Gun, the studio announced on Wednesday. Liam Neeson will star as the bumbling police detective Debin in the role made famous by Leslie Nielsen.
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Akiva Schaffer (Hot Rod, Pop Star: Never Stop Stopping) will direct the film, set for release in July 2025. The script is by Dan Gregor, Doug Man and Schaffer, who collaborated on 2022's Chip 'N Dale: Rescue Rangers.
The Naked Gun films, derived from the TV series Police Squad!, were high-water marks for slapstick comedy. They ran over six years: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988), The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991) and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994).
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Nielsen died in 2010 at the age of 84. Before playing Lt. Drebin, Nielsen had been largely a dramatic actor. “It’s been dawning on me slowly that for the past 35 years I have been cast against type,” Nielsen once said, “and I’m finally getting to do what I really wanted to do.”