Although the original *Naked Gun* director David Zucker is one of the rare few who didn’t enjoy Seth MacFarlane’s legacy sequel, he’s not gatekeeping his rules for making a good spoof.
Despite the Liam Neeson-starrer’s critical and commercial success, Zucker recently said that producer MacFarlane’s installment “totally missed” the mark, blaming the Paramount comedy’s big budget.
“My brother, Jerry, and our partner, Jim Abrahams, started doing spoof comedies 50 years ago, and we originated our own style—and we did that so well that it looks easy, evidently,” he explained to *Woman’s World*. “People started copying it, like Seth MacFarlane for the new *Naked Gun*. He totally missed it.”
David noted that he, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams had “a certain method to the madness” with their original 1988 spoof starring Leslie Nielsen, which was an offshoot of their 1982 ABC series *Police Squad!*.
“We had our 15 rules, and I’m teaching them in the hopes that if anybody tries to do a movie like this again, they’ll do it right,” he said. “You shouldn’t spend too much money on comedies, and one of our rules is about technical pizzazz.”
Adding more on budget concerns, Zucker stated, “Big budgets and comedy are opposites, and in the new *Naked Gun*, you could see that they spent a lot of money on scenes full of technical pizzazz while trying to copy our style.”
Budget aside, the recent sequel was praised for bringing comedy back to theaters. Premiering on August 1, *The Naked Gun* grossed $102.1 million worldwide and is currently “Certified Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, boasting an 88% critic score.
Produced by Seth MacFarlane and Erica Huggins, *The Naked Gun* was directed by Akiva Schaffer from a script written by Schaffer, Dan Gregor, and Doug Mand.
https://deadline.com/2025/11/naked-gun-og-director-not-fan-seth-macfarlane-sequel-1236619163/