Chris Columbus has 900 boxes of old Mrs. Doubtfire footage, wants to make a documentary with it
Columbus says Williams would improvise so much that he'd burn through all of the film in the cameras
Before he died, Robin Williams supposedly stipulated in his will that Disney was not allowed to repurpose unused recordings of his performance as the Genie in Aladdin for new movies involving the Genie, which Disney apparently got permission to ignore for its “Once Upon A Studio” anniversary short. And now that that proverbial genie is out of the proverbial bottle, other people are apparently realizing that they should also be doing something with the mountains of unused Robin Williams content they’re sitting on.
People like Chris Columbus, who directed Williams in 1993’s Mrs. Doubtfire. Speaking with Business Insider, Columbus revealed that he has “over 900 boxes” of additional footage from the movie sitting in a warehouse and he’d like to make a documentary with it at some point detailing Williams’ creative process. He also said that he shot “almost 2 million feet of film” for the movie (which is about 34 IMAX Oppenheimers, if that helps), all because Williams wanted to improvise as much dialogue as he could.
Columbus said that Williams pulled him aside early on and said, “I’ll give you three or four scripted takes, and then let’s play”—meaning that he would improvise—and Williams unsurprisingly had so much fun improvising as Mrs. Doubtfire that he would just burn through all of the film in the cameras. Eventually, Columbus started using four cameras so he could keep some focused on Williams and some focused on the rest of the cast so he could “get their reactions” to whatever Williams was doing (Pierce Brosnan and Sally Field would apparently break character a lot).
But regarding the Genie thing, Columbus has no interest in making any sort of Mrs. Doubtfire sequel. He says that he talked to Williams about it the year he died and that they had a “really strong” script, but Williams was apparently concerned about having to wear the Mrs. Doubtfire costume again. After his death, though, Columbus decided that he would never want to touch a reboot or a sequel or whatever, going so far as to say that if Disney ever tried to do it he would “certainly be very vocal about it.”