Ben Stiller is looking back at one of his box office misses.
In a new interview, the 58-year-old actor revealed that he was completely shocked that one certain movie of his flopped in the box office and received “horrible” reviews from both fans and critics.
Keep reading to find out more…While appearing on David Duchovny‘s new podcast Fail Better, admitted that 2016′s Zoolander 2, the sequel to the 2001 hit movie, flopping left him “blindsided.”
“I thought everybody wanted this,” Ben said. “And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really f–ked this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews.”
According to Variety, Zoolander 2 only made $29 million in the domestic box office despite have a $50 million budget.
Along with starring in the movie, Ben also wrote, produced, and directed it.
“It really freaked me out because I was like, ‘I didn’t know was that bad?’” Ben recalled. “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.”
Ben said that he then went into a period of reflection, which ultimately fueled new projects.
“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,” Ben recalled. “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.”
He continued, “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.”
“Why didn’t you want to?” David then asked. “Was it anger?”
“It was just hurt,” Ben replied. “Finding yourself in terms of what creatively you want to be and do, I I always loved directing. I always loved making movies. I always, in my mind, loved the idea of just directing movies that since I was a kid, and not necessarily comedies. And so, over the course of like the next like, nine or 10 months, I was able to develop these limited series.”
Following Zoolander 2, Ben went on to direct the crime drama Escape at Dannemora in 2018, for which he won a DGA Award for Outstanding Directing – Miniseries or TV Film and was also nominated for an Emmy.
He also produced and directed the Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ series Severance.
In another recent interview, Ben revealed if he has any regrets over his controversial 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder.
