With Zoolander 2 already out there...
Now that Zoolander 2 has been released, it is time for that duo to work on Starsky and Hutch Part 2.
Not going to happen..... Zoolander has always had a big audience crying out for more (its just Stiller has never wanted to do it, but has hinted at it a number of times to test the waters to see what reaction is like), whereas S&H is just a few lone voices crying out for a 2nd movie.
Everyone thinks/feels that Zoolander was a box office flop because of the circumstances of its release date, but has recovered from that to become a cult classic.
S&H was viewed as a flop (sleeper hit at best) upon its release and has stuck with that ever since.
It made $170mil worldwide on a $60mil budget, and had strong home video sales. Not a blockbuster hit on the level of, say, The Hangover, but very good for a comedy -- especially over ten years ago, before the foreign market exploded (and even then, the foreign market often rejects American comedies, especially Ben Stiller/Will Ferrell/Adam Sandler/et al. comedies). In contrast, Zoolander made $60mil worldwide on a $30mil budget.
Starsky and Hutch was not a flop, and "sleeper hit" probably doesn't apply either, according to your own reasoning, as a sleeper hit is a film that typically opens small, with little to no promotion, and plays well and has strong holds because audiences like it; or just a film that is underestimated before release. Starsky and Hutch was a big studio movie with two big comedy stars that was well promoted and opened fairly big but didn't hang around too long. The perception that it was a flop is probably more to do with audiences' ambivalence towards the film, rather than how much money it made.
Clearly there's more of a cult fanbase for Zoolander years later, and more people calling out for a sequel -- but I actually think Starsky and Hutch is just as funny, and maybe just a bit ahead of its time. Compare its subversive send-up of the source material to 21 Jump Street, and it's quite similar; even the drug trip scene! I think if it had been released within this past decade, where meta comedy is now way more commonplace, it might have been understood more; but from my recollection, at the time, fans of the shows didn't like it because it felt like a mockery of the source material, and Stiller/Wilson fans didn't like it because it maybe wasn't quite as slapstick or silly as something like Zoolander. Phillips has a very dark sense of humour and honestly, I just feel like movie was in search of an audience that it would have found more readily today.
I think a sequel very well might have happened if Phillips' career hadn't taken off big with The Hangover a few years later, and if Stiller hadn't had other big film in its wake; if their careers had stalled the same way as Wilson and Vaughn, it probably would have at least been on the table at some point, and while i doubt it'll happen this late in the game, I wouldn't be opposed to it. I do enjoy the original.
After ten years or so, I've finally changed my signature!