Kevin Durand
HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP/Getty Images
After donning ape fur for his upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Kevin Durand is now getting Naked.
The actor, who is also currently on screens with horror movie Abigail, has joined Liam Neeson in Paramount Pictures’ untitled remake of Naked Gun, based on the crime spoof comedies that were released in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Pamela Anderson and Paul Walter Hauser are also on the call sheet for the feature that will begin shooting later this month.
Akiva Schaffer is directing the comedy, which has a script by Dan Gregor, Doug Mand and Schaffer. The trio were behind the popular and Emmy-winning Disney+ movie Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers.
The original movie, written and directed by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker and based on their television series Police Squad! that lasted only six episodes, spoofed the tropes of police shows and films that had ingrained themselves into audience’s minds over the decades. It centered on an inept and clueless detective named Frank Drebin, played by Leslie Nielsen, who still somehow managed to solve the crime and save the day.
Neeson is playing Drebin with Anderson starring as the love interest. Hauser is playing Captain Ed, the role played in prior Naked Gun films by George Kennedy.
Details are being kept holstered but sources say Durand will play one of the villains.
Seth MacFarlane and Erica Huggins are producing via their company Fuzzy Door. Schaffer is exec producing along with Daniel M. Stillman.
Paramount has penciled a July 18, 2025, release for the feature.
Durand is in the midst of a big studio moment. In Universal’s Abigail, directed by Radio Silence, he plays a good-natured but dim enforcer who steals scenes with his light comedy touch in a film soaked with blood. In Apes, he is under a digital coat of fur playing Proximus Caesar, the power-mad king of the apes, a role for which he went to ape school. The movie, from 20th Century Studios, opens May 10.
The actor was recently nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for his role in the CBC limited series Essex County, which is based on the graphic novel by Jeff Lemire. And he also reunited with Carlton Cuse for a third time on Netflix series Locke & Key, after previously working with the showrunner on the Guillermo del Toro series The Strain and on Cuse’s seminal series Lost.
Durand is repped by Independent Artist Group, Alchemy Entertainment and Brecheen Feldman Breimer.
