Ben Stiller Says He ‘F*cked Up' With ‘Zoolander 2'

Film history has shown us, time and time again, that making a sequel to a classic comedy tends to be a recipe for disaster. “Anchorman 2,” “Dumb and Dumber To,” “Coming 2 America,” “Airplane II,” “The Hangover 2,” “Legally Blonde 2,” “Nutty Professor II,” “Weekend at Bernie’s 2,” “Little Fockers,” “Caddy Shack II,” “Blues Brothers 2000.”

The list goes on and on.

Maybe, worst of all, was Ben Stiller’s decision to direct and star in “Zoolander 2.” The film was met with atrocious reviews and bombed hard at the box-office — only racking up $28 million domestically. It’s been nearly forgotten, and Stiller would like it to remain that way.

Stiller has said in the past that “Zoolander 2” flopping at the box office was “not a great experience,” but he now admits, on an upcoming episode of David Duchovny’s “Fail Better” podcast (via People), that the disastrous results really surprised him at the time.

I thought everybody wanted this. And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really fucked this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews […] It really freaked me out because I was like, ‘I didn’t know was that bad?' What scared me the most on that one was I’m losing what I think what’s funny, the questioning yourself … on ‘Zoolander 2,’ it was definitely blindsiding to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time.

Stiller does admit that with “Zoolander 2” flopping, he decided to reset his career priorities and instead focus on directorial opportunities that interested him the most as an artist, such as “Escape From Dannemora” and “Severance.”

“The wonderful thing that came out of that for me was just having space where, if that had been a hit, and they said ‘Make “Zoolander 3″ right now,’ or offered some other movie, I would have just probably jumped in and done that,” Stiller said. “But I had this space to kind of sit with myself and have to deal with it and other projects that I had been working on — not comedies, some of them — I have the time to actually just work on and develop.”

He’s right. These last seven years, Stiller has been absent in the acting game, and instead built up an acclaimed career in TV directing. He even won the DGA for his work in ‘Dannemora.’ Meanwhile, “Severance” was one of the most critically acclaimed shows of 2022.

Stiller is also set to return to filmmaking. I previously reported that he’s going to be directing “The Seven Five,” starring Jeremy Allen White. “Zoolander 2” notwithstanding, Stiller has had a fairly fruitful career in feature directing, his credits include “Reality Bites,” “The Cable Guy,” “Zoolander,” “Tropic Thunder” and “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”