Jerry Zucker thinks so

The Naked Gun films could be revived … but without Leslie Nielsen as bumbling cop Lieutenant Frank Drebin.

That's the view of series' creator Jerry Zucker, who said the ‘international brand’ was not wholly dependent on the deadpan star, who died in 2010, and ready for a reprise.

Promoting his latest movie Scary Movie 5, the writer-director said: 'You could do another Naked Gun, with a reboot. Like Star Trek'.

And as for replacing the man that the late critic Roger Ebert called 'the Olivier of spoofs', Zucker added: ‘There are people who can do that and they're not famous. You wouldn't know who they were. But I know actors who can do it. Again, I think Paramount has an international brand in Naked Gun and I think there's something you can do.'

The director clarified that he was more personally inclined to revive the spirit of Drebin, rather than the series itself.

'There's room for a Naked Gun style,’ he told Hollywood.com. ‘A bumbling guy in a position where he's respected. Leslie Nielsen played Lieutenant Frank Drebin and nobody seemed to have a clue that he's an idiot. I want to do the character, but not the specific [job]. Not Naked Gun' he said.

Zucker – along with his brother David and Jim Abrahams – defined the modern spoof genre with the 1980 disaster movie parody Airplane!, which co-starred Nielsen in his breakthrough role as the deadly serious Dr Barry Rumack, advising a stewardess to not call him Shirley. The Canadian actor had previously enjoyed a lengthy career as a dramatic and romantic lead.

The last in the Naked Gun trilogy was released in 1994. At the time of Nielsen’s death it was reported that Paramount had planned a direct-to-DVD Naked Gun 4 without the star, who was considered too expensive for such a limited release. But after learning that the star was not involved, the writers dropped out and the project shelved.

Two of Nielsen’s final movies before he died from complications brought on by pneumonia were Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4, directed by David Zucker, in which he played a paranoid, out-of-control US President.

In a tribute delivered after Nielsen passed away, the older Zucker brother described his 'good-natured debate' with the actor 'about who the hell was luckier to have met the other, Leslie Nielsen or the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team'.

He revealed 'how he 'always tried to find a place for him in whatever movie I was doing. And he was always delighted to accept. And when each movie came out, he always turned out to be the funniest thing in it. A director couldn’t ask for a better track record.

'In all the movies we did together, we hardly had to shower him with any verbal praise. He always knew he was doing OK because 'I could hear David laughing during the take,' he would say. And I was! Tough to just sit there silently during “Nice beaver!”'

Here’s a clip:

- by Jay Richardson

Published: 12 Apr 2013