Mrs. Doubtfire director Chris Columbus recently revealed that he met with Robin Williams to discuss a potential sequel to the beloved film prior to his death in 2014.Williams committed suicide in August 2014 by hanging himself with a belt after struggling with bipolar disorder and addiction for decades. He was 63.

Speaking to Business Insider, Columbus recalled his final meeting with the late actor and how they looked over a ‘really strong’ script together.

‘He and I didn’t talk about a sequel until the year he passed away,’ Columbus told the outlet.

‘We had a script that was written and it was the last time I saw Robin. I went to his house and we sat down and talked about it and the script was really strong.’

Released theatrically in 1993, Mrs. Doubtfire follows newly-divorced Daniel Hillard (Williams) who, in the hopes of spending more time with his children, disguises himself as a Scottish nanny and convinces his ex-wife Miranda (Sally Field) to hire him.

Mrs. Doubtfire director Chris Columbus recently revealed that he met with Robin Williams to discuss a potential sequel to the beloved film prior to his death in 2014; Williams seen in Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

RIP: Williams committed suicide in August 2014 by hanging himself with a belt after struggling with bipolar disorder and addiction for decades. He was 63; seen in September 2013

Williams had to spend approximately four hours in hair and makeup to transform into the titular character.

So after looking over the sequel script, Williams asked if he ‘had to be in the suit as much this time.’

He said that the transformation was very ‘physically demanding’ for him and compared it to ‘running a marathon’ every day.

‘So we talked about it and I think he was hoping in the rewrite we would cut back on the Doubtfire character,’ Columbus said.

‘But then Robin passed away so there will never be a sequel to Mrs. Doubtfire.’

Columbus also revealed why it took 21 years for Williams to finally come around to the idea of a sequel.

‘Back then, there was an attitude that sequels were looked down upon by the artists. So Robin was against doing a sequel immediately after,’ he explained.

Now, nearly 10 years after Williams’ death and 30 years since the original film’s release, Columbus isn’t sure about the future of Mrs. Doubtfire.

He believes that ‘Fox/Disney owns the rights’ to the character so they ‘can do whatever they want’ — whether it be a sequel or a TV series.

But Columbus is staunchly against it.

‘Should they? God no. I will certainly be very vocal about it if they decide to do it.’

Columbus shared plenty of insight into the making of Mrs. Doubtfire as well as Williams’ acting process with Business Insider this week.

Williams did so much improv on the set of Mrs. Doubtfire that 2 million feet of film had to be shot to accommodate him.

Columbus kept ‘four cameras’ running at all times to ‘keep up with’ Robin.

In fact, Robin was such a whirlwind of improvisation that Chris still has ‘972 boxes of footage’ from Mrs. Doubtfire – and hopes to use some of it in a documentary.

Speaking to Business Insider , Columbus recalled his final meeting with the late actor and how they looked over a ‘really strong’ script together; Columbus seen directing Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

‘Strong: ‘[Williams] and I didn’t talk about a sequel until the year he passed away,’ Columbus told the outlet. ‘We had a script that was written and it was the last time I saw Robin. I went to his house and we sat down and talked about it and the script was really strong’; seen in September 2013

Plot: Released theatrically in 1993, Mrs. Doubtfire follows newly-divorced Daniel Hillard (Williams) who, in the hopes of spending more time with his children, disguises himself as a Scottish nanny and convinces his ex-wife Miranda ( Sally Field ) to hire him

‘Early on in the process, he went to me: ‘Hey boss, the way I like to work, if you’re up for it, is I’ll give you three or four scripted takes, and then let’s play,” Chris recalled.

‘By saying that, what he meant was he wanted to improvise. And that’s exactly how we shot every scene. We would have exactly what was scripted, and then Robin would go off and it was something to behold.’

Chris spared a thought for the ‘poor script supervisor’ Margaret de Jesus. ‘Remember, this is the early 1990s, she wasn’t typing what he was saying. She was handwriting it and Robin would change every take.’

The filmmaker shared: ‘So Robin would go 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 didn’t even get it all. Often, he would literally give us a completely different take than what we did doing the written takes.’

He reflected: ‘If it were today, we would never end. But back then, we were shooting film so once we were out of film in the camera, we would say to Robin: ‘We’re out of film.’ That happened on several occasions.’

Said he: ‘It got to the point that I had to shoot the entire movie with four cameras to keep up with him. None of us knew what he was going to say when he got going and so I wanted a camera on the other actors to get their reactions.’

Chris noted that as regards Robin’s co-stars ‘Pierce Brosnan and Sally Field, it was quite difficult for them not to break character.’

Lifting the curtain back on Robin’s creative process, Chris let slip two particular scenes that were the result of improvisation.

‘The entire restaurant sequence was amazing. When Robin playing Mrs. Doubtfire loses his teeth in his drink, you can see the glee in Robin’s face, he’s almost smiling to himself that he came up with that,’ he said.

Columbus believes that Williams was ‘hoping in the rewrite’ that he wouldn’t have to wear the Doubtfire suit as much

Tragic: ‘But then Robin passed away so there will never be a sequel to Mrs. Doubtfire,’ he concluded; Williams seen in September 2013

The scene unfolds as Miranda goes out to dinner with boyfriend Stu (Pierce Brosnan), the children and Daniel in disguise as Mrs. Doubtfire.

During a toast, the false Mrs. Doubtfire teeth slip out of Daniel’s mouth and into his wineglass, leaving the adults at the table mortified.

Without breaking character, he starts trying to fish the dentures out of the wine with a fork, joking feebly: ‘Carpe dentum, seize the teeth.’

‘And the second one that stands out is what I call the pie-in-the-face sequence. It’s when Mrs. Sellner (Anne Haney) comes to Daniel’s apartment and he’s going back and forth as Mrs. Doubtfire and Daniel,’ he went on.

‘When he’s in the bedroom putting on the Doubtfire costume, that probably was his hardest work on the film. Verbally and physically. He was physically spent after doing that. I think we did 18 takes on that sequence.’

Chris revealed that he hopes to go back into his massive stockpiles of footage from Mrs. Doubtfire to piece together a documentary about Robin’s process.

‘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,’ he 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.’