Pamela Anderson and Director Akiva Schaffer on the set of The Naked Gun from Paramount Pictures. Paramount Pictures Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Writer-director Akiva Schaffer initially thought a reboot of The Naked Gun was blasphemous until he realized the full potential of having Liam Neeson step into the shoes of Leslie Nielsen. In 2021, producer Seth MacFarlane was tasked with reinventing ZAZ's (Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker) beloved spoof comedy franchise after three decades and a few failed revivals along the way. The Family Guy creator's first order of business was to attach Neeson, whom he'd worked with on A Million Ways to Die in the West and Ted 2. From there, MacFarlane's president at Fuzzy Door Productions, Erica Huggins, handled the director search, which quickly led her to Schaffer, due to the warm reception he'd just received for Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022). Of course, she was also a fan of his 2016 cult hit, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, as well as his longtime comedy trio, The Lonely Island, consisting of childhood friends Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone. Related Stories Movies 'The Naked Gun': What the Critics Are Saying Movies 'The Naked Gun' Review: Liam Neeson Nails the Deadpan Goofiness, but Pamela Anderson Is the Scene-Stealer in Uneven Legacy Sequel Schaffer's commitment didn't come automatically. He insisted on a page-one rewrite of a script that a couple Family Guy writers had written. Even MacFarlane himself has referred to that iteration as too much of a "cover band version" of 1988's The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! Schaffer also wanted his Rescue Rangers writers, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, to help him pen a new take, one that didn't overly play the hits of the original Naked Gun trilogy, such as the cherished opening credits featuring composer Ira Newborn's Naked Gun and Police Squad! theme. The compromise was to place it in the closing credits. "I love the siren opening in the first three Naked Gun movies just like everyone else loves it, but that doesn't mean I need to see it again. And I did get a lot of pushback on that, I'll be honest," Schaffer tells The Hollywood Reporter. "That opening was spoofing M Squad, and I'm not [spoofing] a Lee Marvin 1950s TV show anymore. I was like, 'Our opening credits should feel like Terminator 2.' We're [spoofing] now, but anything from 1990 till now was also open season." When Schaffer informed his friends that he was tackling a new Naked Gun, the first question everyone asked involved the manner in which he would handle O.J. Simpson's Naked Gun character, Nordberg. Thus, during the first week of writing, Schaffer and co. wrote the "Hall of Legends" scene that was prominently featured in the film's first teaser. Neeson's Frank Drebin Jr. and Paul Walter Hauser's Ed Hocken Jr. pay tribute to framed photos of Nielsen's Drebin Sr. and George Kennedy's Hocken Sr., before cutting wide to reveal a total of ten cops giving tearful salutes to their late parents. Then the camera transitions to a framed portrait of Simpson's Nordberg, prompting Moses Jones' Nordberg Jr. to break the fourth wall, shake his head and not deliver his own sentimental moment. The joke took the internet by storm, and anytime the teaser or trailer played at movie theaters, the moment always set off a big reaction. But to his credit, Schaffer never strummed that chord again due to the controversy that continues to swirl around a figure as notorious as the late Simpson. "To be honest, we never wrote another O.J. joke. We just went, 'Yep, that takes care of that,'" Schaffer says. "I didn't know that the joke would kill as hard as it did at our first test screening. If I had known that, then maybe I would've written other jokes. But you want to be respectful of everything that revolves around him, so it's not something I really took glee in. We just had to acknowledge it in a way we thought was not dancing on anybody's misfortunes." Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Schaffer also discusses how Neeson and Pamela Anderson ended up being paired together in the now critically acclaimed reboot, as well as the currently fragile state of the studio comedy. *** A fourth Naked Gun installment has gone through quite the development journey the last 16 years. Once you joined in the fall of 2022 for this iteration, what was the key to finally getting it up and running? Well, Liam had already been attached for quite some time. I remember reading about it at some point and being a little jealous. I was like, "Ooh, that's a good idea." So when I got the incoming call, the Liam part of it definitely piqued my interest. But if it was just, "Hey, what's your take on a new Naked Gun?" I would've been like, "Of course not. The first Naked Gun is so good, and there's no