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

On 4/26/2024 3:05 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:

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.

>
The main problem was that this movie should have been made 8 years
prior. Zoolander was a genuinely good movie at the right time. It would
have been great if they could have caught that lightning in a bottle.
But they didn't. And it's the old problem of making sequels when the
hype already has passed. If you lose the connection to the zeitgeist
it's hard to make a good movie, unless you do something that makes up
for it.
Or in other words: it isn't so bad if you crank out sequels even if they
are bad, as long as they catch the audience. That's why The Fast and the
Furious still is going, that's why Police Academy managed to make it to
6 sequels.