The Other Naked Gun Reboots You Never Got to See

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Naked Gun is such a surprisingly important property for Paramount, in fact, that this Liam Neeson-starring iteration isn’t the first time the studio tried its hand at rebooting it. For over a decade before this new Naked Gun took aim at audiences, Paramount tried multiple times to overhaul this saga.

The Unrealized Ed Helms Era of Naked Gun Cinema

Back in late 2013, word first began to drip out that Paramount Pictures was rebooting The Naked Gun. This news dropped the same month the studio sent Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues out into theaters. Exploiting valuable comedy movie brands was clearly on Paramount’s mind. While Leslie Nielsen’s passing away in 2010 meant that a new Naked Gun movie couldn’t mine the same nostalgia as Anchorman 2 getting Will Ferrell to put on that ’70s mustache, Paramount still saw dollar signs over the prospect of reviving this saga.

In the lead role of this project was Ed Helms, then red-hot off headlining the three Hangover movies. In hindsight, it’s a little odd to imagine how or why Helms could’ve been perceived as the heir to Leslie Nielsen’s throne. For one thing, he wasn’t 60+ years old, seemingly a prerequisite for headlining these films. To boot, Helms wasn’t known for his dramatic gravitas, which Nielsen always effectively juxtaposed with the silliest material. However, Helms was a fiercely in-demand commodity in the early 2010s, so he was set to play the next incarnation of Frank Drebin.

Few updates emerged on the project over the years, with this plan of outright rebooting the Naked Gun property eventually fizzling out. One thing that might’ve thrown a wrench into the proceedings was another Helms vehicle, the 2015 comedy Vacation. Vacation, a legacy sequel to the National Lampoon’s Vacation movies was headlined by Helms. It turned a decent profit in theaters, grossing $104.7 million on a $31 million budget. However, its $58.9 million domestic total was far from the We’re the Millers-style box office haul Warner Bros./New Line Cinema hoped for. Attaching Helms to another reboot of a beloved comedy property might’ve seemed like a poor idea in the wake of Vacation.

David Zucker Tries To Revive Naked Gun

In early 2017, original Naked Gun director/mastermind David Zucker nonchalantly revealed that he and Pat Profit were working with Paramount on a fourth Naked Gun movie. This time, though, the project was being worked on in a post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens world. Reboots were out, legacy sequels were in. Thus, Zucker clarified that this outing would center on Frank Drebin Jr. rather than casting a new actor like Helms into the original Drebin role.

Zucker would later claim that his concepts for another Naked Gun movie were rejected by Paramount brass. In particular, he was frustrated that they ignored his notion of shifting the franchise’s focus to skewering spy movies since cop features were no longer dominant in movie theaters. The cold shoulder these ideas received would explain why it took another four years, following the 2017 Zucker interview, for further Naked Gun news to emerge. This is when producer Seth MacFarlane entered the picture and paved the way for the Akiva Schaffer iteration of Naked Gun hitting theaters.

The many twists and turns that reviving this silly comedy franchise took over 10+ years of development reflect how every movie is an arduous undertaking. Even the most preposterous comedies with the crassest jokes take so much blood, sweat, and tears to bring to the silver screen. This new Naked Gun was no different, with the production cycling through various stars and screenwriters before landing on its final creative team. Now all that’s left is to see if audiences approve of the results of all that extensive labor.

The Naked Gun hits theaters on August 1.