Ben Stiller Says He Was "Blindsided" By "Zoolander 2" Flopping: 'Thought Everybody Wanted This'

Actor Ben Stiller expressed his shock at how badly �Zoolander 2�
performed at the box office following its release in 2016 despite the
original film�s success in 2001.

The 58-year-old star discussed his thoughts during a recent episode of
David Duchovny�s �Fail Better� podcast. �I thought everybody wanted
this,� Stiller said of making the sequel. �And then it�s like, �Wow, I
must have really f***ed 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 directed, wrote, produced, and starred in the sequel, just as
he did with the original. The first �Zoolander� was a critical and
commercial success. The movie satirized the fashion industry as it
documented the life of a male model, Derek Zoolander (Stiller), and his
rival Hansel (Owen Wilson). It earned $60.8 million against a
production budget of $28 million.

The sequel fared much worse. Set ten years after the original,
�Zoolander 2� included many of the original cast members, including
Stiller and Wilson, while Will Ferrell, Penelope Cruz, Kristen Wiig,
Naomi Campbell, and Justin Bieber were also co-stars. Benedict
Cumberbatch played a transgender model named AII.

As The Guardian noted, �Zoolander 2� barely broke even on its $50
million production budget and received terrible reviews.

Stiller told Duchovny that the failure became a learning experience for
him.

�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,� the �Meet the Parents� star 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. Even if
somebody said, �Well, why don�t you go do another comedy or do this?� I
probably could have figured out something to do. But I just didn�t want
to,� Stiller continued.

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Let's go Brandon!