From apes to slapstick, Kevin Durand joins cast of The Naked Gun reboot

Per THR, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes star Kevin Durand will join Liam Neeson in the upcoming reboot of The Naked Gun.

Liam Neeson has long been attached to star in the Naked Gun reboot, and it was announced last month that Pamela Anderson would be starring alongside him. It’s not known precisely who Anderson will play, but it’s expected that she’ll be the romantic lead, similar to Priscilla Presley’s role in the original movies. Paul Walter Hauser has also signed on to play Captain Ed, the role played by George Kennedy in the previous Naked Gun movies. Production will kick off later this month with Akiva Schaffer directing from a script by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand.

Although Liam Neeson has experience in the realm of comedy, he’s never led one himself. He explained why he wanted to take on The Naked Gun earlier this year. “It’s funny because right before Christmas, my sons and I were looking through the Academy screeners and trying to find something silly, some silly, stupid movie that we could giggle at,” Neeson explained. “There was none, of course, as they were all very heavy and international. I mean, brilliant movies but all very heavy. When Seth MacFarlane approached me about it — this was about two years ago, now — I thought, yeah, I guess I could do that as long as I play it dead seriously and not try and imitate Mr. Leslie Nielsen. He was wonderful. Akiva Schaffer is directing it and he’s from the [Saturday Night Live] world. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a good script, and there’s a few laugh out loud moments in it.“

Neeson has also confessed that he’s a little nervous about the project. “I’m honored to be offered the part of Frank Drebin, and a little bit nervous about it because I’ve done a couple of skits before that were just very short TV things, but this would be, I don’t know, 95, 100 minutes of a film,” Neeson said. “They’re still casting it so hopefully my other cast members will be funny and sexy so that I could just be dead absolutely straight.“

Kevin Durand will next be seen as Proximus Caesar in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Directed by Wes Ball, the film “breathes new life into the global, epic franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.” Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will hit theaters on May 10th.