Liam Neeson in talks for Akiva Schaffer’s Naked Gun reboot

As if Liam Neeson’s second-act career wasn’t enough of a parody of shooting, scowling, and growling into a phone, now he’s taking it to the next level: an actual parody movie where he’ll shoot, scowl, and growl into a phone.

According to Variety, the three-time Taken star is in official talks to lead Paramount’s reboot of classic slapstick franchise The Naked Gun. Lonely Islander Akiva Schaffer and his Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers co-writers have written the script, and he’s set to direct, also executive producing alongside Seth MacFarlane.

While The Naked Gun is an iconic property that of course doesn’t need to be messed with, this honestly doesn’t sound bad at all.

Firstly, the Naked Gun brand of parody in general was already all mucked up by a series of inept 2000s pastiches that didn’t understand spoof beyond referencing things. That this particular cop show parody is properly called Naked Gun instead of Cop Show or Angie Tribeca or whatever is not really make or break. There was already the largely-redundant Airplane II: The Sequel done without the involvement of the original ZAZ trio, so let’s not be too precious with it.

Secondly, after all those piss-poor parodies—done largely by the team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, as well as various Wayans—we could do worse than the director of Hot Rod and Popstar. Schaffer has made pretty funny things!

Finally, it’s hard to think of a much more apt new Frank Drebin than Neeson—a man who, like the late Leslie Nielsen, has spun his typically-grave demeanor into comic turns, appearing in the likes of Life’s Too Short, The Lego Movie, Anchorman 2, and MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West. Mostly because we need to keep Jon Hamm making Fletch movies instead.

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