Will Ferrell Says 'Zoolander 2' is Getting Ready to Strike a Pose
Ben Stiller in 2001’s ‘Zoolander’
Sequels to 10-year-old Will Ferrell movies are so hot right now! Following the success of last year’s Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, it appears that the Zoolander sequel is finally getting off the ground. Speaking at the Deauville Film Festival last week, Ferrell confirmed that his Zoolander character, the deranged fashion mogul Mugatu, will definitely appear in the follow-up to Ben Stiller’s 2001 comedy.
“We are actually supposed to do a read-through of a sequel script soon, and Mugatu is a part of it,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Will Ferrell as the evil Mugatu in ‘Zoolander’
Much like the first Anchorman, Zoolander opened to modest numbers in theaters, but became hugely popular on DVD. Ben Stiller wrote, directed, and starred in the over-the-top comedy, about a vacuous male model who unwittingly becomes involved in a political conspiracy. The film featured a remarkable assemblage of comic talent (including a then-unknown Patton Oswalt) and dozens of cameos by celebrity fashion icons, including Heidi Klum and Tommy Hilfiger. Its jokes and catch phrases — like the “Blue Steel” model pout invented by Stiller’s character — soon entered into popular conversation. But only after the huge success of Stiller’s directorial follow-up, 2008’s Tropic Thunder, did the Zoolander sequel talk begin. And it’s been going ever since.
Here’s a sampling: In December 2008, Stiller revealed that he was “trying to get Zoolander 2 together” and had already looked at “a few scripts.” In October 2010, Justin Theroux, who had a Zoolander cameo as an evil DJ and co-wrote Tropic Thunder, told MTV that he and Ben Stiller were basically finished with the script. Two months later, Stiller’s Zoolander co-star Owen Wilson told Collider that production on the sequel would start soon. In 2011, Stiller told Empire that he was just waiting on the studio; in 2012, Lady Gaga was reportedly offered a role; and in 2013, Stiller described Zoolander 2 as “on hold.”
If Ferrell is to be trusted — and who can a person trust, if not Will Ferrell? — then the boys may be catwalking again soon. Stiller has said that the sequel will revisit male models Derek Zoolander (Stiller) and Hansel McDonald (Wilson) ten years down the line, when both of them are washed up and living in Europe.
Watch the trailer for Zoolander:
