Ben Stiller spoke about the failure of “Zoolander 2” at the box office “wasn’t a great experience,” he now admitted in an upcoming episode of the podcast “Fail Better” David Duchovny that he was taken by surprise by the disastrous results of its 2016 sequel.
The “Zoolander” The original became one of his most beloved and cited films in the years after its theatrical release in 2001.
“I thought everyone wanted this”, Stiller said of the “Zoolander” sequel. “And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really screwed this up.’ Not everyone attended. And it has received horrible reviews.’”
“It really scared me because I thought, ‘I didn’t know it was that bad?’”Stiller continued. “The thing that scared me the most in that case was that I was losing what I think is funny, the questioning of yourself… in ‘Zoolander 2,’ it was definitely a surprise to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time.”
Ben Stiller and the refuge behind the cameras
Stiller can now adopt a glass-half-full mentality in the face of the failure of “Zoolander 2,” as he reset his professional priorities away from potential cash-grab opportunities and headed first toward rewarding directing opportunities like “Escape From Dannemora” and “Severance”.
“The wonderful thing that came out of that for me was just having a space where, if it had been a hit, and they’d said ‘Make ‘Zoolander 3′ right now,’ or offered me some other movie, I probably would have jumped on it.” . and I did,” Stiller said. “But I had this space to sit with myself and have to deal with that and other projects I had been working on (not comedies, some of them). I have time to work and develop.”
“Even if someone said, ‘Well, why don’t you do another comedy or do this?’ I probably would have thought of something to do. But I just didn’t want to do it,” Stiller added. “Finding yourself in terms of what you creatively want to be and do, I always loved directing. I always loved making movies. I always, in my opinion, loved the idea of just directing movies since I was a kid, and not necessarily comedies. And so, over the course of the next nine or ten months, I was able to develop these limited series.”
Stiller’s acclaimed Apple TV+ series, “Severance”for which he directs several episodes and serves as executive producer, recently completed production on its highly anticipated second season.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
