‘Bare Gun’ Director Restricted Reboot to Only one O.J. Simpson Joke to Be ‘Respectful’

The Bare Gun is making a comedic reference to all of its earlier stars, together with controversial athlete O.J. Simpson

Director Akiva Schaffer confessed to The Hollywood Reporter that when folks realized he was taking over the latest iteration of the spoof franchise, he was instantly requested about what he would do about Simpson’s Bare Gun character, Detective Nordberg. The late athlete starred within the 1988 authentic, plus the sequels in 1991 and 1994.

“Once I first advised mates, ‘Hey, I’m truly about to jot down a Bare Gun,’ they’d go, ‘What are you going to do about O.J?’ So, immediately, I used to be like, ‘Oh, proper. That’s the elephant within the room that needs to be addressed,’ ” he recalled for the outlet. However he confessed they solely wanted one joke to deal with viewers questions. 

Schaffer, 47, admitted that after writing the preliminary joke acknowledging Simpson’s character, he and the writers “by no means wrote one other O.J. joke.” 

The only real Simpson joke seems within the movie’s trailer, as stars Liam Neeson Frank Drebin Jr. and Paul Walter Hauser pay tribute to framed pictures of their late mother and father in a police Corridor of Legends. It then transitions to a framed portrait of Nordberg (Simpson), earlier than chopping to his son Nordberg Jr. (Moses Jones) breaking the fourth wall and shaking his head in appallment.

“We simply went, ‘Yep, that takes care of that,’ ” Schaffer mentioned. “I didn’t know that the joke would kill as laborious because it did at our first check screening. If I had recognized that, then possibly I might’ve written different jokes,” he continued.

“However you wish to be respectful of every little thing that revolves round him, so it’s not one thing I actually took glee in. We simply needed to acknowledge it in a means we thought was not dancing on anyone’s misfortunes,” he mentioned, seemingly referencing Simpson’s notorious 1995 homicide trial for the homicides of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her buddy, Ron Goldman.

He additionally defined that he and the group “didn’t get pushback or something.” 

“On the edgy jokes, folks would go, ‘Ooh, I don’t know.’ And I’d be like, ‘Don’t fear. The film goes to be 85 minutes. A fourth of the script is getting lower. Something that doesn’t work goes to be lower,’ ” he defined. “In order that’s the best way I made everybody chill out on a regular basis.” (The movie was meant to be 85 minutes lengthy to reflect the unique two movies’ runtimes, however is finally 83 minutes.)

The film, produced by Seth MacFarlane, relies on the Jim Abrahams and David Zucker and Jerry Zucker franchiseThe Bare Gun, which initially starred Leslie Nielsen as self-serious detective Frank Drebin, who managed to rise by means of the ranks of the police squad.

Within the new movie, Neeson stars as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., son of Nielsen’s character, as he follows in his father’s footsteps. The forged consists of Hauser, Pamela Anderson, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Liza Koshy, Eddie Yu and Danny Huston.

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The Bare Gun premiered in theaters on Friday, Aug. 1.