Seth Macfarlane has confirmed that the new The Naked Gun has survived the chaos of last year’s strikes and is still in development.
In 2021, it was announced that Seth Macfarlane would be taking on a reboot/remake of The Naked Gun films, the beloved police spoofs that starred the great Leslie Nielsen (for which there was once an official fourth movie planned too – we wrote about here). None other than Liam Neeson was attached to star (after Ed Helms had been linked for years) and we all sat back to see just what would unfold.
Even Liam Neeson himself seemed somewhat bemused by the turn of events, stating “It’ll either finish my career or bring it in another direction. I honestly don’t know.”
Things moved pretty slowly throughout 2022 and then in 2023 we had months of chaos as the strikes in Hollywood sank lots of projects that were in development. Not The Naked Gun, though – or at least that’s what Macfarlane is stating. Speaking to Collider for the launch of his Ted prequel series, Macfarlane had this to say about the project:
“It’s being worked on as we speak. Akiva Schaffer, who’s written the draft with his team, has done a hell of a job, and it is in development. So, it is still very much alive.”
The original team (specifically co-writer Pat Proft and director David Zucker), to be clear, have no involvement in the new movie.
Back in early 2023, Neeson suggested that the film might even shoot that summer but then months of strikes meant that the writers couldn’t polish the script, then of course the actors also downed their tools.
The project still seems to be alive, though, so there’s a chance that 2024 is the year when The Naked Gun will finally start production.
Time will tell, but we’ll let you know more as we hear it. Until then, nothing to see here…
