The director of the first two "Naked Gun" movies said he will not be seeing the 2025 reboot of his classic spoof series.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, filmmaker David Zucker declared that he would not be watching "The Naked Gun" starring Liam Neeson, stating the entire concept of a "Naked Gun" reboot was unoriginal and played out.
"I don't see any reason to see it," he said.
"And so, it's like, well, Jim Abrahams said, if your daughter became a prostitute, would you go watch her work?" Zucker said elsewhere, quoting the late co-director of "Airplane!", another classic comedy Zucker co-directed.
The director clarified that, despite his harsh view of 2025’s "Naked Gun" reboot, he bears no ill will towards the film’s cast and crew, like Neeson, or producer Seth MacFarlane – the creator of "Family Guy."
"So, Seth MacFarlane came in. He's a big, successful producer, and he came in with a big star, Liam Neeson. I don't have anything against Liam Neeson. I think he's a wonderful actor. He is a fine actor, but generally for spoof, you don't really need that," he said.
"Plus, the way I approach movies is not to do the same thing over again. I didn't even want to do ‘Naked Gun 3.’ And so, somebody else directed it. I produced it while I was writing another movie."
Zucker stressed that he would have done "something new" with another "Naked Gun" rather than repackage his original idea. The director said that prior to Paramount Global greenlighting the Neeson "Naked Gun" he workshopped potential ideas for a "Naked Gun 4." They included a storyline involving the son of police detective Frank Drebin (played by actor Leslie Nielsen in the original) as a spy.
"[What] Pat and Mike and I worked on for a year was to have Drebin’s son, but really his young son, a 30-year-old, and not an LA cop scenario – but a ‘Mission Impossible,’ James Bond, ‘Bourne Identity’ international spoof, international spy thriller. So, I always have wanted to do something new," he said.
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Zucker also told Fox News Digital that he doesn’t want to give people the impression he’s calling for a boycott of the reboot, calling out media reports that have made it seem that way.
"I read things where it says, ‘David Zucker is leading a boycott.’ I'm not leading a [boycott] – all I said was that I have no interest in seeing it." He made sure to note that the new film’s director, Akiva Schaffer, is "a super nice guy" who, along with MacFarlane, asked Zucker in vain for advice on the film.
"But there's nothing I can do to help them because it's not what I would have done," he declared.
Elsewhere, he said, "I think the whole thing is wrong, because that's not how I would do movies. I don't want to copy someone else's work."
Zucker told Fox News Digital that he believes that the entire film industry is suffering from this lack of originality.
"Now it’s all about – you know, the studio executives, for the most part, are frightened. And so that's why all you have now is, you know, big stars, superhero movies, big special effects, Tom Cruise movies," he said, though he clarified he loves Tom Cruise movies.
He added that industry executives are "absolutely playing it safe and also they, you know, they tend to whore after big producers and big stars."
"But mostly, nobody has any new ideas. They want to copy the old ideas, like ‘Naked Gun 4’ is really just a copy of an old idea. I mean, it's a 40-year-old idea to do an older actor as a police detective."
Although he didn’t helm the latest version of "The Naked Gun," Zucker has been hard at work on multiple projects, including a totally new original spoof film, "Star of Malta."
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The filmmaker described his upcoming film as "completely new." He said that it’s "set in 1949. It's going to look like one of those film noir movies that were done from 1945 to 1955. And it's a really great story. And it is a believable story with a young actor cast. And you really believe that they're real people."
Providing a hint of what audiences could expect from the film’s comedy, he added, "It's really what I would say – it's spoof 2.0. And it's really the next thing."
Zucker noted that it’s going to be an indie release, because that’s just how opposed big studios are to original projects these days.
"If you want to do something original, you have to go with the indie route. And ‘Star of Malta’ is only a $10 million budget. So, we'll be able to do that."
Zucker also mentioned his other new project, "Master Crash: A Crash Course In Spoof Comedy." The project is 15-episode instructional web series that teaches viewers the filmmaker’s 15 rules of writing parody. The first episode of Master Crash debuted last month.
The filmmaker told Fox News Digital he wanted to make the course because he wants budding comedy filmmakers and writers to know the "discipline" that has to go into writing classic spoof or parody films for them to work.
"You know, it was all scenes, crazy and zany and weird, but there was a discipline to it," he explained. "And that discipline is – not only in the general story that we're telling – it has to be a believable story. And when I didn't tell a believable story with a believable character, with an arc, the movies weren't as successful."
"And then also you need the knowledge that we've gained about how to write the jokes and then how to direct the jokes," he said, adding, "There's a lot of method to it."