Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson brought Akiva Schaffer’s revival of The Naked Gun to Leicester Square, with Neeson inheriting the Drebin name from Leslie Nielsen.
The Naked Gun held its UK premiere at Cineworld Leicester Square in the West End on Tuesday 22 July 2025, 31 years after the last film in the series. Liam Neeson and his co-star Pamela Anderson walked the carpet.
Neeson was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, in 1952. He worked as a forklift operator at Guinness before joining the Lyric Players’ Theatre in Belfast in 1976, and his screen career began with Pilgrim’s Progress in 1978.
Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Michael Collins, Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace and Ra’s al Ghul came after it, and from 2008 the Taken films made him an action lead.
Akiva Schaffer directed the film and wrote it with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand,. It is the fourth film in a series that grew from the television show Police Squad!, created by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker.
Neeson plays the son of Lieutenant Frank Drebin, the role Leslie Nielsen held across the original three films. Paramount released it in American cinemas on 1 August 2025.