Jim Abrahams death: Co-creator of Airplane! and The Naked Gun dies aged 80

Comedy writer and director died of natural causes

‘Airplane’ and ‘The Naked Gun’ co-creator Jim Abrahams in Beverly Hills in 2006 (Getty Images)

Jim Abrahams, the writer-director who helped create a string of much-loved comedies including Airplane! and The Naked Gun, has died. He was 80.

His son Joseph told The Hollywood Reporter he died of natural causes at his home in Santa Monica on Tuesday (November 26).

He worked alongside fellow writers Jerry and David Zucker on a number of successful slapstick spoofs. They were known collectively as Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, or ZAZ for short.

Abrahams, who was born James Abrahams on May 10, 1944, first met the Zucker brothers while the trio were growing up in Shorewood, Wisconsin.

Together they founded a small theater known as The Kentucky Fried Theater in 1971, which led to their sketch comedy film The Kentucky Fried Movie in 1977. The film parodied various film genres and attracted star cameos from the likes of George Lazenby, Bill Bixby and Donald Sutherland.

They followed that with Airplane! in 1980, which they wrote and directed collaboratively. The disaster parody became their breakout hit, grossing $171 million worldwide against a budget of just $3.5 million and winning ZAZ the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Comedy.

Leslie Nielsen with Priscilla Presley in ‘The Naked Gun’ (Paramount Pictures)

After finding success with their spoof of disaster movies, ZAZ next set their eyes on police procedurals. They created the ABC television series Police Squad! in 1982, which starred Leslie Nielsen as detective Frank Drebin, but it ran for just four of its scheduled six episodes before being cancelled.

They next moved on to the spy spoof Top Secret! (1984), which gave a young Val Kilmer his film debut in the starring role, and the black comedy Ruthless People (1986), from a script by Dale Launer.

Abrahams branched out on his own to direct the 1988 comedy Big Business, which starred Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin as two sets of identical twins mismatched at birth.

That same year, ZAZ revived Nielsen’s Frank Drebin character in the hit police spoof movie The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! The film was a commercial success and spawned two sequels, which Abrahams was not involved with. The film series is set to be revived next year, with Liam Neeson playing the son of Nielsen’s hapless character.

In 1991, Abrahams again went out on his own to write and direct the Top Gun spoof Hot Shots!, starring Charlie Sheen. The film was a hit and in 1993 Abrahams again wrote and directed a sequel, Hot Shots! Part Deux.

In 1998, he wrote and directed the gangster spoof Mafia!, also known as Jane Austen’s Mafia!.

Abrahams is survived by his wife Nancy Cocuzzo, who he married in 1976, his sons Joseph and Charlie, his daughter Jamie, and his grandchildren, Caleb, James and Isaac.