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Original Naked Gun director David Zucker has been talking shit on The Naked Gun reboot basically since it was announced, but he’s still able to be gracious about it. Following a solid opening weekend for Akiva Schaffer’s take, Zucker tells The Hollywood Reporter, “I’m excited about it because it just shows that there’s a strong market for comedy in movie theaters, and spoof in particular. People are liking it, which is great. I really like the director, and I just couldn’t wish him more well. I texted him already, saying, ‘I hear the reviews are great, and it’s tracking well.’ He was very happy to hear from me, and we’ll probably get together later in the month when the smoke clears.”
Back in 2023, Zucker and his Naked Gun co-writer Pat Proft expressed unhappiness that Paramount could just give their franchise to somebody else—especially after they’d written their own version of Naked Gun 4 that also would’ve focused on Frank Drebin’s son. As recently as last week, Zucker was complaining that the reboot isn’t what he’d do with the material and bemoaning the lack of originality in Hollywood. Nevertheless, he only ever had kind things to say about Schaffer and producer Seth MacFarlane. “I can’t get mad at anyone who will tell me what a genius I am,” he says to THR, adding that he had a “good conversation” with MacFarlane early on, “but I told him politely, ‘Good luck, but I can’t put my name on this.’ [But] everything happens for a reason.”
One of those reasons—which also doubles as a reason David Zucker is glad to see a big spoof movie do well in theaters—is that he has his own scripts in the works, including an adaptation of his Naked Gun 4 idea called Counterintelijence and a noir spoof called The Star Of Malta. So he’s doing his own thing, and let the new Naked Gun guys do theirs without even taking a producer credit. “I don’t need the money. After the agents and managers, it would have paid three electric bills, probably,” he jokes. “If it’s a big hit, Akiva should get the credit, and he deserves it.”
Even as The Naked Gun reboot, which stars Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, garners critical and commercial success, Zucker says he has no desire to see it and told Schaffer as much, even declining an invitation to come see an early cut. “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.”
