How David Zucker’s Scrapped ‘Naked Gun 4’ Would Have Joked About O.J. Simpson
David Zucker, the director of the original The Naked Gun, famously wasn’t super-happy about this summer’s Liam Neeson-starring reboot. Zucker refused to watch the new movie, and even suggested that the filmmakers could have learned a few things from his online comedy classes.
Zucker was seemingly extra-annoyed because Paramount had rejected his pitch for a fourth Naked Gun movie, which he claimed was scrapped because of a sexist gag involving a kevlar vest and breast reduction surgery. “It’s just a stupid, mild joke, but that was too much for them,” Zucker argued.
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The unproduced Naked Gun legacy sequel would have similarly followed the adventures of Frank Drebin Jr., although he would have been younger than Neeson and become an Ethan Hunt-esque superspy. And, not unlike the Akiva Schaffer’s reboot, Zucker’s movie would have included a joke about O.J. Simpson’s post-Naked Gun notoriety.
2025’s The Naked Gun includes a scene in which Frank Jr., Ed’s son and many other cops tearfully eulogize their dead dads in Police Squad’s “Hall of Legends.” But when we get to Officer Nordberg’s son, the actor refuses to pay tribute to the character played by Simpson, for obvious reasons.
“We never wrote another O.J. joke. We just went, ‘Yep, that takes care of that,’” Schaffer told The Hollywood Reporter. “I didn’t know that the joke would kill as hard as it did at our first test screening. If I had known that, then maybe I would’ve written other jokes. But you want to be respectful of everything that revolves around him, so it’s not something I really took glee in. We just had to acknowledge it in a way we thought was not dancing on anybody’s misfortunes.”
The first 25 pages of Zucker’s script (co-written by Pat Proft and Michael McManus) were recently released on The Stunt List, and it’s clear that they would have leaned even harder into true crime-inspired humor. One of the film’s titles is, itself, an O.J. joke: Naked Gun 44 ¼: Nordberg Did It. The alternate name, Naked: Impossible, makes it clear that the movie is a spy spoof rather than a cop movie parody.
The script makes a very pointed reference to the accused murderer. It turns out that Frank Drebin Jr. didn’t realize that his dead dad was a police officer, who was apparently recruited by a top secret intelligence agency at some point after the events of Naked Gun 33 ⅓. Frank Sr.’s widow, Jane, shows her son a photo album, which includes snapshots of Nordberg.
“Who’s this?” Frank Jr. asks.
“His best friend, Nordberg,” Jane responds. “Devastated by Frank’s death. Devoted his life trying to track down the killer. Then suddenly his wife was found dead. He then devoted his life to tracking down that killer.”
When Frank Jr. inquires about the current whereabouts of this “brave” man, Jane responds with yet another meta-barb: “I saw him at Frank’s memorial service, said goodbye, sold him my knife collection and never heard from him again.”
Which approach is funnier is debatable — but both are funnier than O.J.’s ill-conceived prank show.
