Paramount Pictures
Sometimes, legacy sequels to beloved movies — such as Creed or Top Gun: Maverick, to name a few — wind up as massive successes. Other times, they wind up being Zoolander 2, which was ravaged by critics and barely broke even at the box office.
The failure of Zoolander 2 was so deep, in fact, that is left star and director Ben Stiller wondering if he had lost touch of what’s funny.
“I thought everybody wanted this,” Stiller said of Zoolander 2 while appearing on . “And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really f—– 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 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.”
One look at Stiller’s filmography and its clear that it changed following the release of Zoolander 2 in 2016, as he’s since starred in just two films: Brad’s Status and The Meyerowitz Stories, which were both released in 2017.
Other than that, Still has cameoed as himself in 2019’s Greed and 2022’s Bros, and reprised his role as the evil orderly Hal from Happy Gilmore in Adam Sandler’s 2020 film Hubie Halloween.
Instead of acting, Stiller has been busy working as an acclaimed television director, helming the 2018 crime drama Escape at Dannemora and the AppleTV+ psychological thriller Severance, which just completed production on its second season.
Severance, in particular, has been a massive success as its first season was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series at the Emmy Awards, in addition to numerous other accolades.
Stiller is set to return to the big screen in the coming years, however, as he’s starring in the upcoming comedy Nutcrackers from Pineapple Express and Halloween director David Gordon Green.