The Naked Gun Returns to Theaters in 2025

You’ll have to excuse Detective Frank Drebin if he’s a little rusty on the crime-solving beat. After three decades of retirement, slapstick sleuthing is making its long-awaited return to movie theaters.

Slapstick spoof comedy The Naked Gun: The Return of the Highly, Highly, Highly Deodorized Mutual Fund is arriving in theaters August 1, 2025. This time around, however, it’ll be Liam Neeson and not the late Leslie Nielsen in the lead role. Neeson will portray Drebin’s son in the “legacy sequel” to the famous film series about the fastidious officer and his motley crew of crime fighters.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! First graced screens in 1988, launching Nielsen’s character, the peculiarly scrupulous Detective Frank Drebin, into cult status. Drebin attempts to prevent a group of assassins from killing Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to Washington, D.C. The film’s absurdity and buffoonery are paired with its hallmark deadpan one-liners, and it was a hit with audiences, spawning two sequels. The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear was released in 1991 and follows Drebin’s attempt to foil the kidnapping of a leading nuclear scientist. In 1994’s Naked Gun 33½: The Final Insult, Drebin returns from retirement to investigate a bomb plot intended to disrupt the Academy Awards ceremony.

Beyond 1994, Drebin has only made rare appearances. Attempts to reboot the franchise failed for years. Paramount brought up the idea for a continuation as early as 2013 and signed The Office actor Ed Helms to star in the project. “Frank Drebin, no relation,” according to Helms, as the original Frank passed away in 2010. But the project would not come to fruition, for several reasons, including a reluctance to move forward from David Zucker, who was behind the first two films in the series.

Zucker stayed on as producer for the reboot and, at one point, was part of a pre-production writing group. He would later be uninvolved with the production, however, and the new take on The Naked Gun starring Helms did not materialize. Zucker did work on a revamp of the Frank Drebin script in 2017 with another “sequel” in mind. The new take on the franchise also never came to fruition, with Drebin’s son this time being the story’s main character, with Drebin coming out of retirement to help, only to discover the son is an undercover secret agent.

The project finally picked up steam once again in 2021 with Seth MacFarlane at the helm and without Zucker’s involvement. Liam Neeson would be cast as Frank Drebin Jr., the police lieutenant’s son of Drebin. Neeson is joined by Paul Walter Hauser as Captain Ed Hocken, Jr., the police lieutenant and son of Drebin Sr’s longtime companion; Pamela Anderson as Beth, a femme fatale whose brother has recently been murdered and who enlists Drebin Jr. to solve the mystery; and Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, CCH Pounder, Busta Rhymes, and Eddy Yu. Hauser is also set to reprise his role as Mole Man in Fantastic Four: First Steps.

The first teaser trailer was released in April to a lukewarm reception. David Zucker, who will not be involved with the reboot, told TMZ he was unhappy after viewing the teaser, saying that “I can’t unsee it.” But fans can still take some comfort in a few nods to the franchise’s legacy. Neeson, for one, is comfortable in the saddle and hamming it up with his parody of the famously serious “particular set of skills” characterization from the Taken films. The best part of the trailer is probably the Taken parody in which Drebin Jr. dramatically says, “Once you kill a man for revenge, there’s no going back,” before pulling off an attacker’s arms and beating them with the limbs. “A voice in your head saying over and over ‘That was awesome,’” he adds.

The trailer also contains more sentimental callbacks to the franchise. In one scene, Frank and Ed Jr. are seen tearing up while looking at plaques memorializing their fathers’ legacy.

But just because this new Naked Gun film is at least paying homage to its predecessors doesn’t mean it’s all straight-faced sentiment. This is, after all, The Naked Gun. And, as always, the plot takes a backseat to the jokes. Although the specifics are a little hazy, the trailer suggests that Drebin Jr. and Ed Jr. team up after Beth’s brother is murdered. Beth needs the duo to solve the case, or else the Police Squad will be shut down. Police business in the most classic Naked Gun way possible, with one suspect claiming to have done 20 years for “man’s laughter,” which is actually “manslaughter,” a fact which Drebin rebuts deadpan with “Must have been quite the joke.”

That may be one of the biggest hints as to what to expect from this movie. Neeson, who in the trailer at least, is game to wear the badge, if only to get some laughs when falling.

The humor can be a hit or miss for some. It’s broad, pun-heavy, and needlessly silly and absurd—and that was all the charm of the original Naked Gun films. If the trailer is any indication of what the film will be like, The Naked Gun 2025 is looking to deliver a guilty pleasure of late-summer laughs.