Liam Neeson is an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated actor, one with a career that stretches back over 40 years, and even at the age of 69 he’s still churning out the mid budget thrillers that turned him into one of Hollywood’s most popular and bankable action stars, but one thing he’s never exactly been known for are his comedic stylings.
However, one person who finds Neeson absolutely hilarious is Family Guy and American Dad creator Seth MacFarlane, and it’s now gotten to the stage where the prolific writer and director is in the process of drafting a reboot of The Naked Gun that will see the grizzled veteran step into Leslie Nielsen’s shoes as Lieutenant Frank Drebin.
Paramount have been trying to get a fresh spin on the classic comedy off the ground for almost a decade now, and in a new interview Neeson revealed that it was the studio who approached MacFarlane to crack the script, and then he brought the project to the Taken star for his consideration.
“I know Seth and his team are working on a draft. I’m very excited, and I think and hope Seth might be directing it himself. No date has been set, I think, I believe it’s Paramount Pictures that approached Seth, and Seth approached me. This was about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago. So it’ll either ruin my career, whatever’s left of it, or I’ll find another little adventure, you know?”
Neeson and MacFarlane have clearly struck up a friendship, with the former having made cameo appearances in Family Guy, The Orville and Ted 2, as well as playing a villainous supporting role in A Million Ways to Die in the West. Neeson is actually older now than Nielsen was the last time he played Drebin in 1994’s Naked Gun 33 1⁄3: The Final Insult, but those constant action thrillers have kept him in good shape.
The thought of Liam Neeson and Seth MacFarlane rebooting The Naked Gun could really go either way at this stage and turn out to be a genius or disastrous move, especially when the latter’s work has tended to be fairly divisive among critics and the 1988 original is still held up as one of Hollywood’s best ever studio comedies.