Can 'The Naked Gun' Revive The Big Screen Comedy Genre?

After a decade-long comedy drought, all of Hollywood is watching how Paramount’s The Naked Gun performs.

Credit: Paramount Pictures

Comedies used to be a mainstay on the big screen but have all but vanished from theatres in recent years. Just 10 years ago, major Hollywood studios released 18 such movies, and they were a thriving business, reports the Wall Street Journal. In 2024 there were none. Yet people still love to laugh - stand-up comedy is bigger than ever, short-form comedy rules YouTube, and last week’s Happy Gilmore 2 became the biggest film debut on Netflix ever.

Instead, most of Hollywood’s focus has shifted to seemingly homogenised blockbusters with global appeal or adaptations of well-known IP - films that can generate outsized grosses and work well around the globe. However, comedy doesn’t typically translate easily across cultures, but a theatrical-comedy renaissance feels overdue.

In recent years, when comedy appears on the big screen, it’s usually artfully inserted into a superhero movie like Deadpool, an action flick like The Fall Guy, or a fantasy film like Barbie.

The Naked Gun, is endeavouring to be a straight forward comedy movie. It stars Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., the son of original Naked Gun comedy icon Leslie Nielsen - an incompetent police detective tasked to solve a twisty murder case in Los Angeles. Neeson is joined by Pamela Anderson, and the movie cost a relatively low $42 million to make, and Variety projects it to open at around $16 million… a modest sum, but the hope is that great reviews and strong word of mouth can keep people laughing for weeks on end. It’s an outcome that comedy filmmakers (and audiences?) are rooting for.

If The Naked Gun succeeds, expect Hollywood not only to ramp up development of more straight-comedy films, but also to push for discovering a new generation of comedy stars who can keep the genre sustainable for years to come. Moral of the story? If you would like more comedy movies, go see Liam and Pamela in action and show Hollywood that you like the genre and, by extension, want to see more.