“What scared me the most was the feeling of having lost the sense of what was funny…”
Ben Stiller in Zoolander 2 -Paramount Pictures
As part of the podcast Fail Better hosted by David Duchovny, Ben Stiller returned to the critical and commercial failure of Zoolander 2which he didn’t see coming at all at the time.
After becoming one of the cult comedies of the early 2000s, the idea of a sequel to the excellent Zoolander was in the air for quite a while in Hollywood, before finally coming to fruition belatedly, fifteen years later.
But the public was simply not there for this new parade. And the result was not very convincing, it must be admitted.
“I thought everyone wanted a sequel. I thought, ‘Wow, I must have really missed the target.’ No one went to see it, and the reviews were horrible”remembered Ben Stiller.
“It really took me by surprise […] What scared me the most was the feeling of having lost the sense of what was funny. It affected me for a very long time. »
Finally, Zoolander 2 only managed to accumulate meager revenues of just over $56 million at the worldwide box office. In comparison, the two previous opuses produced by Stiller, the jubilant Tropic Thunder and the charming The Secret Life of Walter Mittyhad raised respectively 195 and 188 million dollars worldwide.
