Ben Stiller says ‘Zoolander 2’ flop affected him “for a long time”

nme.com:

Ben Stiller has said that the Zoolander 2 flop affected him “for a long time” in a new interview.Stiller, who wrote, produced, directed and starred in the 2016 sequel reflected on the experience with X-Files actor David Duchovny’s upcoming podcast, Fail Better.Stiller said: “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.”The film made $29million (£23million) from a reported $50million (£40million) budget and included cameos from the likes of Justin Bieber and Katy Perry.

It also featured actors who appeared in the first film including Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell.Stiller continued: “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, l’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.“…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,” he continued.“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.