It’s becoming one of those great sequel rumors that never dies. Every time TBS shows Zoolander 12 times over a weekend, people begin to collectively wonder, “What’s up with that Zoolander sequel?” It’s also a question that people love to ask anyone involved with the 2001 fashion world parody, because nothing else gets the masses buzzing quite like asking Billy Zane if he’s going to reprise his role as himself any time in the near future. As recently as 2012, even Zoolander’s star Ben Stiller was keeping the rumor alive, claiming that the ball was in Paramount’s court, and now it’s Justin Theroux pouring a little petrol on the flames in an interview with Vulture.
According to Theroux, who is currently starring in HBO’s The Leftovers, he and Stiller are still actively working on the script and will be getting together again next month for another meeting about what to call Derek Zoolander’s latest look.
Are you guys still doing a sequel?
Yeah, we’ve got a script for the sequel, and we’ve just been in talks again. We’re trying to sharpen it and hone it and, actually, I don’t want to jinx anything, but it looks like it actually might be starting to get up and running.
That’s great. It must be hard to coordinate everyone’s schedules.
It’s actually been a little hard with the show, but now I’m back full-time to dedicate time toward doing it. I met with Ben [Stiller] a couple times when I was in New York doing The Leftovers, and then I’m meeting again with him probably in September.
You’re going to direct it, right?
I don’t think I’m going to do it anymore. It really depends on whether the show gets picked up. If it gets picked up, then I don’t think I’ll have the time to do it. So it’ll probably get handed to Ben, which would be awesome. (Via Vulture)
For the “fun fact” crowd out there, Theroux also revealed that his “evil DJ” character in Zoolander was a straight up ripoff of Gary Oldman’s Drexl Spivey in True Romance, which is a character and movie that should always be celebrated, especially since it’s one of the only roles that Oldman doesn’t hate.
As for Zoolander 2, are we all really sure that this is something we still want? Thirteen years can change the way people look at comedy, and while Zoolander is still fun to watch when the remote is out of arm’s reach, it wasn’t really something that left people wondering, “What’s next?” And even if it did, those people had to have moved on already, right? I mean, here’s Stiller as Zoolander with Stefon on SNL‘s Weekend Update in 2011, and it doesn’t really scream, “Another hour and a half of material!”
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