New ‘Naked Gun’ Poster Takes a Shot at AI—and Prepares Liam Neeson for a Hilarious Comeback

The next chapter in the Naked Gun series is on its way, and fans have plenty to look forward to. The new movie is called The Naked Gun, and it brings back the famous goofy police comedy but with fresh faces and some familiar ones too.

Directed by Akiva Schaffer, who also helped write the script with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, this film acts as a legacy sequel to Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult from 1994. It is the fourth movie in the franchise and stars Liam Neeson as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr.

The film is set to hit theaters in the United States on August 1, 2025, courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Alongside Liam Neeson, the cast includes Pamela Anderson returning as Beth, Paul Walter Hauser playing Capt. Ed Hocken Jr., and a mix of other actors like Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, and even Busta Rhymes. Moses Jones joins as Nordberg Jr., carrying on the legacy of the character from the original movies.

The marketing team has already started stirring excitement with a poster that reads, “No AI was used in the making of this poster.” This cheeky tagline plays on the current Hollywood debate about artificial intelligence in film production, especially after the 2023 Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

The poster shows Liam Neeson’s character with a crazy mess of extra fingers, poking fun at how AI often creates glitches and referencing the wild, exaggerated poses Leslie Nielsen famously struck in the original trilogy.

This new movie has been a long time in the making. Back in December 2013, Paramount first announced a reboot was in development with Ed Helms originally cast to play a new Frank Drebin.

The script at that time was co-written by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, and the project was meant to introduce a new main character who was related but different from the original Frank Drebin.

However, over the years, the idea shifted several times. David Zucker, one of the original creators, chose not to be involved, feeling that modern audiences might not connect with the old style of comedy, and the project went through rewrites. By 2017, Zucker and Pat Proft were working on a new script where Frank Drebin’s son would be a secret agent rather than a policeman, with the film tentatively titled Naked: Impossible.

Things took another turn in 2021 when Seth MacFarlane joined the project. He was known to be interested in casting Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., and after some back and forth, the studio officially greenlit the movie in October 2022 with Neeson confirmed in the lead role and Akiva Schaffer set to direct.

The script saw contributions from multiple writers including Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, Mark Hentemann, Alec Sulkin, and MacFarlane. Paramount and MacFarlane’s production company, Fuzzy Door Productions, are producing the film.

The journey of this reboot shows how much care is being taken to honor the classic comedy while updating it for today’s viewers. With its August 2025 release date fast approaching, audiences will soon get to see if Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. can live up to his father’s legendary goofy detective status.

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