“Mrs. Doubtfire” director Chris Columbus revealed to Business Insider while celebrating the movie’s 30th anniversary that talks for a sequel to the beloved 1993 comedy only started in 2014 shortly before Robin William’s death. Without the actor, there was not a shot that Columbus would ever make a follow-up.
“It’s an interesting thing. Back then, there was an attitude that sequels were looked down upon by the artists. So Robin was against doing a sequel immediately after,” Columbus said. “He and I didn’t talk about a sequel until the year he passed away.”
“We had a script that was written and it was the last time I saw Robin,” he continued. “I went to his house and we sat down and talked about it and the script was really strong. Robin’s only comment was, ‘Boss, do I have to be in the suit as much this time?’ It was physically demanding. For Robin, I think it was like running a marathon every day he was in the Doubtfire costume. He was older, obviously. So we talked about it and I think he was hoping in the rewrite we would cut back on the Doubtfire character. But then Robin passed away so there will never be a sequel to ‘Mrs. Doubtfire.'”
The 1993 comedy stars Williams as a recently divorced actor who disguises himself as an elderly female housekeeper so that he can continue to see his children. The supporting cast includes Sally Field and Pierce Brosnan. The film was a huge box office hit, making $441.3 million on a $25 million budget to become the second highest-grossing film of 1993.
Columbus also revealed in his Business Insider interview that Williams improvised so much on set that he recorded two million feet of film during production. The filmmaker still has boxes full of footage that he is hoping to turn into a documentary one day.
“There are roughly 972 boxes of footage from ‘Doubtfire’ — footage we used in the movie, outtakes, behind-the-scenes footage — in a warehouse somewhere and we would like to hire an editor to go in and look at all of that footage,” Columbus said. “We want to show Robin’s process. There is something special and magical about how he went about his work and I think it would be fun to delve into it. I mean, there’s 2 million feet of film in that warehouse so there could be something we can do with all of that.”
Head over to Business Insider’s website to read Columbus’ interview in its entirety,
