The Naked Gun is on track to set a major box office record. The 2025 movie is a reboot and legacy sequel that stars Liam Neeson as the wacky cop Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the character played by Leslie Nielsen in the 1982 parody series Police Squad! and the original Naked Gun movie trilogy that spun off from it.
2025’s The Naked Gun was directed by Akiva Schaffer from a script he wrote with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand. It marks Liam Neeson’s first time toplining a comedy movie since 2020’s Made in Italy, a dramedy in which he co-starred with his son, Micheál Richardson.
Per ᴅᴇᴀᴅline, as of Saturday morning, The Naked Gun is projected to debut with a total of $16.5 million at the domestic box office, premiering at No. 3 behind The Bad Guys 2 and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
If it does indeed hit that number by the end of Sunday, this will set a record for the star that has not been matched in a decade. It is poised to earn the best opening weekend for a Liam Neeson-led movie since 2015, when Taken 3 debuted with $39.2 million.
What This Means For The Naked Gun
It is important to note that this record for Liam Neeson movies does not include projects in which he held a supporting role or appeared in a cameo, such as Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (which had a $177.4 million debut), in which he had a small voice role reprising the character of Quin-Gon Jinn.
This is a major turnaround for movies featuring Liam Neeson in the lead role, which haven’t consistently had openings this solid since the early 2010s with тιтles such as Non-Stop ($28.9 million), Taken 2 ($49.5 million), Unknown ($21.8 million), and The Grey ($19.7 million).
Our Take On The Naked Gun Record
The fact that the new Liam Neeson comedy movie has set this record for the star could indicate that he could be in for another major career shift. While the original 2008 smash hit Taken launched him as an action star, his post-2015 action movies, including The Commuter and Cold Pursuit, have seen diminishing returns.
The fact that The Naked Gun has surpᴀssed them could mean that Neeson’s next best move would be to star in more comedies, harnessing the comic chops that he has displayed in this new reboot, as well as in cameo roles in recent comedies such as Ted 2, Anchorman 2, and Daddy’s Home 2.
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Source: ᴅᴇᴀᴅline
