31 years is way too long to go without a new Naked Gun movie, so thankfully this year’s reboot is now available on VOD. It’s full of bonus features with more laughs, including alternate takes and deleted jokes. The interviews with filmmakers also tell us how it was done.
Seth MacFarlane produced the new Naked Gun. The modest Family Guy creator said he only takes credit for one aspect of The Naked Gun.
“My part of this was really just having the thought that Liam Neeson would be really funny in a Naked Gun reboot,” MacFarlane says. “That’s really the extent of my contribution to this iteration. Akiva and his team came around and were able to crack the nut we weren’t. 100% of the credit goes to him.”
Neeson, who starred in MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West, also recalled the offer.
“Seth MacFarlane, who is an old pal, called me up a couple of years ago and dangled the idea of me doing this reboot as this character and I said I was interested,” Neeson says. “It was as simple as that.”
To be fair. MacFarlane did hire Schaffer too. The Lonely Island founder saw the potentail to create something and avoid pitfalls.
“I got the call saying, ‘How would you like to do a new Naked Gun with Liam Neeson?’” Schaffer said. “That opened my mind to the possibilities of how it could be a new thing, how it could exist alongside the old Naked Gun, honor the old Naked Gun and take the spirit of the old Naked Gun but maybe be a new movie. You’re never going to do better than the first movie. You can only hope to do different.”
Cinematography has changed in the decades since The Naked Gun and the reboot keeps pace with new digital formats and styles. On 4K, The Naked Gun really looks like the other movies it is satirizing, including Neeson’s own movies and Mission: Impossible – Fallout.
It sounds like one of those movies too, with extensive surround sound effects for the action, but also jokes coming through the surround channels too. Physical 4K UHDs, DVDs and Blu-rays street November 11.