'I must have really f***ed this up': Ben Stiller says 'Zoolander 2' failure made him question if he still knows what's funny

Ben Stiller revealed that the release of "Zoolander 2" didn't sit well with him and made him wonder if his perspective on comedy was still relevant.

Stiller, who has produced amazing comedies like "Dodgeball" and "Tropic Thunder," followed up his 2001 hit "Zoolander" with a sequel in 2016.

The original had seen over a decade of memes and quotes that kept certain themes of the movie alive, making Stiller expect that fans were clamoring for the second film.

"I thought everybody wanted this," Stiller said. "And then it's like, 'Wow, I must have really f***ed this up.' Everybody didn't go to it. And it's gotten these horrible reviews."

With a reported budget of $50 million against making just $29 million domestically (Variety), Stiller appeared to believe that reigniting the old flame was a good move. The film's original stars all returned, including Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell. It also included Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Mila Jovovich, Penelope Cruz, and Stiller's father, iconic actor Jerry Stiller.

Stiller revealed how big a toll the failure took on his psyche during an interview with actor David Duchovny on the "Fail Better" podcast.

"It really freaked me out because I was like, 'I didn't know [it] was that bad?'" Stiller continued. "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."

Stiller recalled that the movie's poor performance affected him so much that it actually stopped him from making films and led to developing more series.

"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 added. "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."

This stopped the 58-year-old from jumping into a series of other comedy movies that he may have regretted.

"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," he explained.

Duchovny, now 63, asked, "Why didn't you want to? Was it anger?"

"It was just hurt," Stiller answered. "Finding yourself in terms of what creatively you want to be and do, I always loved directing. I always loved making movies. I always, in my mind, loved the idea of just directing movies 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."

"Sequels are hard because really what audiences want is to feel what the first movie made them feel, but again. That wonder, that newness, that love at first sight. And they're not always going to get that from a sequel — sometimes they're going to get that from just some other film that you make," producer Cody Clarke told Blaze News.

"To me, 'Tropic Thunder' is more of a 'sequel' to 'Zoolander' than 'Zoolander 2' is, because what I loved about 'Zoolander' is that it was this whole other world, completely out of left field, that was so committed to and so uniquely funny. And 'Tropic Thunder' does that in spades, and 'Zoolander 2' doesn't do that at all," he added.

Stiller has either produced or help produce five series since 2020, including "La Flamme," "Severance," "Le Flambeau, les aventuriers de Chupacabra," "In the Dark," and "High Desert."

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