Akiva Schaffer’s reboot of The Naked Gun has been winning over a lot of skeptical fans with its latest trailer — but the director of the original film has yet to be convinced.
David Zucker, who co-directed classics such as Airplane! and Top Secret!, has been very critical of the new movie, recently telling Fox News that “just being a fan” doesn’t qualify the filmmakers to take on the goofy franchise.
Don’t Miss
Part of Zucker’s dissatisfaction with the new project seemingly stems from the fact that Paramount previously turned down his pitches for potential franchise continuations. In a new interview with Film Threat, Zucker confirmed that one rejected sequel idea was a spy movie spoof called Naked: Impossible, which had been preceded by a more straightforward continuation dubbed Naked Gun 4: Nordberg Did It.
Zucker also noted that, after the latest trailer was released, he and collaborator Pat Proft received a “ton of interview requests and questions from people wondering why we’re not involved.” Weirdly, Zucker claimed that, despite his history of snide comments (he once compared the teaser trailer to a notoriously disgusting X-rated video), he’s not all that bothered by the reboot.
“I enjoy my life, and this doesn’t distress me,” the director claimed. “All I can say is that’s Hollywood. It’s a big studio, it’s a big producer, big stars, and they’re doing it (with) a whole different approach than we would have done.”
After all, Zucker himself has happily made sequels to movies without the input of the original filmmakers: Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4, which followed the Wayans Brothers admittedly Zucker-esque hits. And that situation was far worse, considering that it involved Harvey Weinstein and allegations of plagiarism (against Weinstein, not Zucker).
Still, despite purporting to be super-chill about the whole thing, Zucker is refusing to ever watch Schaffer’s film, or even any of its promotional material. “I haven’t seen the trailer, I’m not intending to see the movie. I don’t have any interest (in seeing it),” Zucker stated, adding that he’s just “not going to spend any time on it.”
“We’re doing our own stuff,” Zucker continued. “We don’t want to go back and do what we did before no matter who they get to replace Leslie Nielsen, we’re just not interested in it.”
The Police Squad! co-creator also spent a significant chunk of the interview arguing that “PC (culture) has ruined comedy to a large extent,” which is why “there’s no good comedy” anymore — something that will come as a surprise to anyone enjoying all the good comedy that exists today. And seeing as how his last directorial effort was the godawful right-wing Dickens riff An American Carol, it’s possible that his definition of “good comedy” is different from ours these days.
Source link
