Original ‘Naked Gun’ Director Claims That Paramount Lied to Reboot Filmmakers About His Involvement

The new Liam Neeson-starring take on The Naked Gun is earning rave reviews, either because that movie’s just that good, or film critics are all secretly in the pocket of Big Spoof.

But one person who won’t be watching the new movie is David Zucker, the director of the original Naked Gun, and to a far lesser extent, that movie in which the ghost of General Patton scares a Michael Moore lookalike into loving ‘merica. 

Zucker has been highly critical of the reboot in the press, telling Fox News that “just being a fan” of the earlier movies doesn’t guarantee success. He’s also stated that he will never see the new film because he’s “not going to spend any time on it.”

In a new interview with The Telegraph, Zucker confirmed that he still has no plans to see 2025’s Naked Gun, likening it to a previous, famously disastrous attempt to recreate the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker style. “Can you imagine me sitting there, watching that? It’s not going to happen,” he told the outlet. “A similar thing happened 40 years ago when they did Airplane II (written and directed by Ken Finkleman). None of us ever saw it.”

Zucker is still peeved that his pitch for a fourth Naked Gun movie was ultimately rejected. “Paramount liked the script, but I think Hollywood stepped in,” Zucker said, perhaps implying that the shadowy group that secretly controls the entertainment industry put a stop to his parody movie.

But he also seemed to soften his tone a little when discussing the reboot, claiming that he didn’t want to go “too far into the weeds in bad-mouthing” the movie, and noting that the new filmmakers are “really well-meaning and they’re big fans.”

While producer Seth MacFarlane never met with Zucker, director Akiva Schaffer did. “The director came to my house a couple of times,” Zucker revealed. “We had meetings, and I told him we had a script and everything. He’s a very nice fellow. I don’t really want to offer an opinion on (the reboot). What I’ve said is that it wasn’t what I would have done.”

He also suggested that the studio behind the Naked Gun franchise actively misled Schaffer about the original team’s involvement. “When (Schaffer) had his first meeting at Paramount, he said he didn’t want to do this unless the Zuckers were involved,” Zucker revealed. “Paramount assured him that the Zuckers would be involved, and then, as it turned out, the Zuckers weren’t involved.”

While Zucker clearly likes to boast about his cultural importance, he may very well be telling the truth here. It wouldn’t actually be that surprising to learn that Schaffer hoped that Zucker was cool with the project, seeing as how Schaffer is clearly a huge fan of the originals, even believing that a reboot would “ruin” the franchise before he took the job. After all, this is a guy who’s been giving promotional interviews while wearing a Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear baseball cap.

Zucker did admit that if the new movie is a hit, it could help him secure funding for his repurposed Naked Gun 4 script, now called Counter Intelijence, which we assume will star Kelsey Grammer and Bill O’Reilly.