I don’t think I’m exaggerating too much when I say that Zoolander was one of the funniest films of all time. The sequel? Not so much. In fact it was so bad that Ben Stiller now admits he was devastated by how much it flopped in the box office and with movie fans and critics.

Ben Stiller, who wrote, produced, directed and starred in the 2016 sequel (a whole 15 YEARS after the original – which probably didn’t help matters), told David Duchovny’s Fail Better podcast:

“I thought everybody wanted this. 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.”

Zoolander 2 only made $29 million against a $50 million budget, despite also featuring Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell, who were excellent in the original.

“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.”

It also put him off making comedies for a while:

“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.

“It was just hurt. 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 that since I was a kid, and not necessarily comedies.”

I guess he can take some solace in the fact that most comedy sequels suck, although the original Zoolander was so good that nobody would have expected the sequel to be as unfunny as it was. Probably doesn’t help that they rehashed all the jokes, had a bunch of crap celebrity cameos like Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, and a crappy storyline about his fat son and body positivity. But I guess rehashing old jokes worked quite well for the Meet the Parents movies, so you can’t blame him for trying to stick with a winning formula.

The biggest mistake though was waiting so long to make the sequel in the first place. 15 years?! Imagine if The Hangover released its first (and possibly only) sequel 15 years after the original. That would be this year – 2024!

Well anyway, Ben Stiller is still a legend and we all love him even with Zoolander 2 being rubbish. Apparently he and Vince Vaughn have an idea for Dodgeball 2 that’s currently in the works, so let’s hope that turns out better for him.