"It'll either finish my career or bring it in another direction."
While a lot of film fans will attribute Liam Neeson's action movie career redirection to Taken in 2008, it's much more likely it was instigated by Batman Begins in 2005.
Since then, it feels like he's been in a million action movies, but in reality it has only been (checks IMDb) 24. Which, y'know, is still a lot.
It was just
a few days ago that Neeson, on the press tour for his latest action movie, The Marksman, that he announced he is officially retiring from action acting, saying the following:
"I’m 68 and a half, 69 this year. There’s a couple more I’m going to do this year - hopefully, Covid allowing us - there’s a couple in the pipeline and then I think that will probably be it. Well, unless I’m on a Zimmer frame or something."
However, in an interview with
Entertainment Tonight, Neeson mentioned the next direction his career might be possibly taking:
"I’ve been approached by Seth MacFarlane and Paramount Studios to maybe resurrect the Naked Gun films. It’ll either finish my career or bring it in another direction. I honestly don’t know."
Neeson and MacFarlane have worked together a fair bit already, on A Million Ways to Die in the West, Ted 2 and The Orville, he's even played himself in a few episodes of Family Guy and he's actually shown a flair for comedy before, most notably as a split-personality police officer in The Lego Movie.
How soon, or if at all, we might see this Naked Gun reboot is still unknown, as Neeson still has still got a few more movies on his upcoming schedule to complete, including - yep, you guessed it - a couple of action movies!
And you know what? We will watch each and every one of them.
