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Liam Neeson is joining the police squad for a Naked Gun reboot - and here is the release date

If you see only one movie in 2025... you out to get out more often (and see Liam Neeson's Naked Gun).

News by Avery Kaplan, Contributing writer

Published on Sun Aug 11 2024

The Naked Gun franchise is beloved by comedy fans the world over. Originating with the Police Files! TV series in 1982, which ran for one season of six episodes, the franchise made the leap to the big screen with 1988’s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! This was followed by 1991’s The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear and 1994’s The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult. Starring Leslie Neilsen as Detective Frank Drebin, the first four entries in the Naked Gun franchise are considered to be seminal comedy classics. So when can fans expect to see the fifth movie, The Naked Gun, in theaters?

The upcoming crime comedy movie is directed Akiva Schaffer and features a screenplay by Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, Schaffer, Mark Hentemann and Alex Sulkin from a story by Seth MacFarlane. The reboot will star Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. Also appearing will be Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser as Capt. Ed Hocken, Kevin Durand as an undisclosed villain, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, CCH Pounder and Busta Rhymes.

The long-gestating reboot was first announced in December 2013 in a substantially different form. While MacFarlane officially came aboard the project in January 2021, the Family Guy creator had previously raised the idea of having Neeson play Drebin Jr in 2015. With principle photography in Atlanta having wrapped at the end of June 2024, Naked Gun fans won’t have to wait too much longer to see the fourth entry in the franchise. The movie is scheduled to be released in United States theaters on Friday, July 18, 2025.

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Avery Kaplan: Avery lives and writes in Southern California. She is the co-author of Double Challenge: Being LGBTQ and a Minority with her spouse, Rebecca Oliver Kaplan. Avery is Features Editor at Comics Beat, and you can also find her writing on StarTrek.com, The Gutter Review, Geek Girl Authority, and in the margins of the books in her personal library.