Original ‘Naked Gun’ Director Slams Seth MacFarlane-Led Reboot | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Amanda Harding.

    The director of the original "Naked Gun" movie starring Leslie Nielsen said the producer of the 2025 reboot, Seth MacFarlane, "missed the mark."

    David Zucker made the remarks during a recently published interview with Woman's World.

    "My brother, Jerry, and our partner, Jim Abrahams, started doing spoof comedies 50 years ago, and we originated our own style ... and we did that so well that it looks easy, evidently," he told the outlet.

    "People started copying it, like Seth MacFarlane for the new 'Naked Gun,'" Zucker continued. "He totally missed it."

    Zucker explained how "there's a certain method to the madness" that's difficult to replicate. "We had our 15 rules, and I'm teaching them in the hopes that if anybody tries to do a movie like this again, they'll do it right."

    Zucker is best known for directing "The Naked Gun" (1988), "The Naked Gun 21/2" (1991), and for writing "The Naked Gun 33⅓" (1994). He also directed the popular spoof comedy "Airplane!" (1980).

    He took issue with the film's budget, for one thing.

    "You shouldn't spend too much money on comedies, and one of our rules is about technical pizzazz. Big budgets and comedy are opposites, and in the new 'Naked Gun,' you could see that they spent a lot of money on scenes full of technical pizzazz while trying to copy our style," he went on.

    Zucker told The Hollywood Reporter when MacFarlane's version hit theaters in August that he wasn't planning to see the reboot.

    "I've told [director Akiva Schaffer] that I have no intention to see it," he continued. "He actually invited me to come see an early cut of it, but I told him there's nothing I could do to help because it really isn't what I would have done."

    "That's not to say that he didn't actually end up doing a good movie. But I don't think I could help with that," Zucker said.

    The filmmaker also said that he was offered an executive producer credit on MacFarlane's version, but said he turned it down because he didn't want to "take credit on anything that I didn't work on from the beginning."


    MacFarlane's new version of "The Naked Gun" grossed $102.1 million worldwide and currently has an 88% critic's score and 73% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

    The movie stars Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the late Nielsen's character Frank Drebin. Pamela Anderson also starred in the film, leading to rumors of a real-life romance between her and Neeson.