A lot is riding on the upcoming reboot of The Naked Gun. Perhaps, too much. But that’s the position we find ourselves in. With tech companies opting to dump movies with built-in audiences, such as Happy Gilmore 2, on their streaming services, studios are releasing fewer and fewer comedies every year. That is if this public service announcement from The Naked Gun is to be believed.
“Every year, more and more comedies go unmade, unseen, and unquoted,” Liam Neeson says in the new PSA for Naked Gun. “But for the price of one movie ticket, you can help rescue a comedy.”
While there’s no shortage of jokes in movies and plenty of hilarious indies, such as Hundreds Of Beavers, the number of comedies has been trending downward since 2007. In 2024, comedies made up about 10% of the market share, but more than halfway through 2025, the genre accounts for 1.66%. That’s theatrical comedies, and doesn’t account for streaming releases like You’re Cordially Invited, a Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon Prime Video release that we swear exists. Nor does it account for action comedies like Bride Hard, which we believe was theatrically released but may have been a Quibi. (Bride Hard, currently has a domestic box office total of “n/a” on The Numbers, so do with that what you will). It also doesn’t account for family adventure movies like A Minecraft Movie or Lilo & Stitch, so we may need to broaden our definition of comedy to include genre mashups and special effect bonanzas.
To hedge a bit, we’re not statisticians. This article already contains more percentages than someone with this byline should reasonably be referencing—especially at this hour. Additionally, it’s not as if there are no comedies. It’s that the genre makes up a smaller portion of the overall pie. Returning to The Numbers, One Of Them Days is currently the only comedy to gross more than $50 million this year. It’s also the only movie on the list released by a major studio. The second is The Day The Earth Blew Up, which was a major studio release until its initial studio tried to bury it.
That’s why The Naked Gun would like you to save comedy movies—or at least a comedy movie. Thankfully, it came up with a pretty funny marketing gimmick to entice audiences.
