‘Woman. Robin Williams documentary ‘Doubtfire’ may be in the works

Director Chris Columbus revealed it insider Marking the 30th anniversary of the 1993 family film, he hopes to turn the 2 million feet of footage into a documentary about the late actor Williams’ approach to improvisational acting.

“Yes, we are talking about it and trying to implement it,” Columbus said. “I mean, there’s 2 million feet of film in this warehouse, so it might be that we can do something with all of that. “About 972 boxes of footage from ‘Doubtfire’ – footage we used in the film, outtakes, behind-the-scenes footage – are sitting in a warehouse somewhere and we’d like to hire an editor to look at all the footage.”

He continued: “We want to show Robin’s trial. There was something special and magical about the way he did his work, and I think it would be fun to delve deeper into it.”

The Home Alone director added that Williams was “in the prime of his life at that point” with his comedic acting, calling his performance “divine inspiration.”

“We had exactly what was in the script and then Robin went and it was something to behold,” Columbus said of the “Good Will Hunting” star’s improvisation. “The poor script supervisor. Remember, this is the early 1990s, she didn’t type what he said. She wrote it by hand and Robin changed every shot. So Robin went to a place where he couldn’t remember much of what he said. We would go to the script supervisor and ask her, and sometimes she wouldn’t even get everything.”

Williams played two characters in the film: soon-to-be-divorced single father Daniel and nanny Mrs. Doubtfire, a character Daniel creates to be closer to his three children while his estranged wife (Sally Field) has a strict custody agreement with them him.

According to Columbus, Williams spent “four and a half, maybe five hours” in the makeup chair transforming herself into Mrs. Doubtfire.

“The further we progressed with production, the faster it went. Regardless, we were never able to shoot Robin as Mrs. Doubtfire on two consecutive days because he woke up at 3 a.m. to do his makeup, so we could shoot at 8 a.m.,” Columbus said. “It was a hard day for him, so we always shot him the next day as Daniel.”

Columbus revealed that he had approached Williams about a sequel in 2014, the year Williams died.

“At that time [in 1993], there was an attitude that sequels were looked down upon by artists. “So Robin was against doing a sequel immediately after,” recalls Columbus. “He and I didn’t talk about a sequel until the year he died. We had written a script and it was the last time I saw Robin.”

Columbus continued, “I went to his house and we sat down and talked about it and the script was really compelling.” Robin’s only comment was, “Boss, do I have to be in the suit so much this time?” It was physical stressful. I think for Robin, wearing the Doubtfire costume was like running a marathon every day. He was obviously older. So we talked about it and I think he was hoping that in the rewrite we would reduce the Doubtfire character. But then Robin died, so there will never be a sequel to “Mrs.” Doubt fire.’”

As for a possible sequel in general, Columbus noted that the Williams family, including Robin’s daughter, director Zelda Williams, does not own the rights. Columbus personally added that he would never want a sequel without Williams.

“Fox/Disney owns the rights, I think. I don’t think the Williams family owns it, so the studio can do whatever they want with it. Should you? God no,” said Columbus. “I will certainly be very vocal if they decide to do that.”