‘The Naked Gun’ Reboot Trailer Really Made This O.J. Simpson Joke
While most legacy sequels to beloved movies find a way to incorporate original cast members, that was unlikely to happen in Akiva Schaffer’s reboot of The Naked Gun.
Leslie Nielsen, who played Lt. Frank Drebin, passed away in 2010. George Kennedy, aka Captain Ed Hocken, died in 2016. And since Priscilla Presley has publicly claimed that she would turn down any invitations to return to the franchise, that really only left O.J. Simpson.
Although he died shortly before filming began, there was seemingly no attempt to involve Simpson in the project, for obvious reasons. But that doesn’t mean that the movie won’t include some references to the notorious accused murderer.
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The first teaser trailer for 2025’s The Naked Gun just dropped. It finds Liam Neeson’s Frank Drebin (the son of Nielson’s character) brutalizing a gang of bank robbers while improbably dressed as a schoolgirl, complete with a Mission: Impossible-style rubber mask. This could be a reference to the fact that the original movie similarly began with Drebin in disguise, and possibly the very first episode of Police Squad!, which was similarly about a bank robbery.
This sequence is immediately followed by a scene in which Frank Jr. pays homage to his late father, as does Ed’s son (played by Paul Walter Hauser). In fact, Police Squad’s “Hall of Legends” is full of people tearfully mourning their dead cop dads, including the son of Simpson’s character Nordberg. But after looking up at a framed photo of O.J., Nordberg’s son refuses to offer up any kind words about his dad and, instead, breaks the fourth wall by turning to the camera and shaking his head.
Simpson’s association with the Naked Gun series is obviously deeply strange in retrospect. Original director David Zucker once explained that O.J. was cast, not because he was a good actor, but because famous athletes are “very economical to hire and they’re a marquee name.” Plus, Zucker had successfully worked with another legendary athlete, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in Airplane!
But while O.J.’s acting was perfectly fine in the three Naked Gun movies, his murder trial and subsequent armed robbery conviction no doubt distract from the comedy of certain scenes in retrospect. His initial arrest in the ‘90s even tainted the entire franchise for a time, causing a planned Naked Gun video game to be canceled because any series co-starring Simpson was considered to be a “bit dodgy.”
So perhaps it’s wise that the new Naked Gun movie isn’t shying away from addressing the elephant in the white Bronco.
