How ‘Bicentennial Man’ Survived Near-Death Experience

Having successfully collaborated on the 1993 comedy hit “Mrs. Doubtfire” and again on “Nine Months” in 1995, director Chris Columbus and Robin Williams almost instantly agreed to team up for “Bicentennial Man.”

That was a no-brainer.

Then came the hard part: coming to terms with Walt Disney Co., which controlled the purse strings for the futuristic comedy.

The movie, which opens today, tells a story that spans different time periods over 200 years as it follows the adventures of a household robot (Williams) who discovers his own humanity. It was adapted by screenwriter Nicholas Kazan from a short story by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.

“We realized it was a pretty high-priced movie,” acknowledged Columbus, whose 6-year-old production company is named 1492.

“When someone does a normal science fiction movie, you come in and create a future, and you can do it for a fairly reasonable budget. But we were creating seven distinct futures, and the original vision of that was just out of this world--some insane amount of money,” Columbus said.

He declined to discuss the movie’s final costs, which certainly are more than $100 million.

Before reaching an agreement, Disney Studios Chairman Joe Roth insisted that Columbus and his producing partners, Michael Barnathan and Mark Radcliffe, shave nearly $20 million off the original budget.

“We went back and realized there was a way to make the film without hurting the integrity of the characters,” Columbus said. “Cutting back on the special effects was essentially what we needed to do.”

The San Francisco-based director, whose screen credits also include the 1990 blockbuster comedy “Home Alone,” said that moving a few key scenes indoors cut tens of millions of dollars from the budget.

“Outside, you have to create the entire environment with new cars, new parking meters, new traffic lights, new buildings, and that’s where the budget got prohibitive,” Columbus said.

Disney still wasn’t satisfied.

“Chris got to the point where he said: ‘I don’t want to cut any more. If I have to cut any more, I don’t want to make this movie,’ ” Barnathan said. “And Disney said, ‘We’re not going to spend any more money.’ ”

Though they were well into pre-production and had already built sets on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, Disney pulled the plug.

“Disney literally shut us down. They said, ‘We’re not making the movie,’ ” Barnathan said.

“I had been there for weeks watching the sets being constructed, and then suddenly they were being torn down,” Columbus recalled.

About a week later, Roth, with whom Columbus had had a successful history at 20th Century Fox with the “Home Alone” movies and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” called a meeting with Disney executives and Columbus’ and Williams’ representatives.

Barnathan, who was representing Columbus, was delighted with the outcome. Roth had placed a call the night before to Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman John Calley, who agreed to co-finance the $100-million film and distribute it overseas for half the pot.

Roth believes “Bicentennial Man” will have the same mainstream appeal as other Columbus family movies during the holiday moviegoing season.

“His films completely reflect his own ethical core, sense of humanity and humor, and people love to feel good around the holidays,” said the Disney chief.

Columbus is in the peculiar position of having his films usually loathed by critics for being too sappy, yet embraced by audiences who relate to his themes of family, heart and humor.

He claims he no longer reads reviews of his movies. “I’d read the reviews before a movie opened and think, ‘It’s over,’ then the American public would validate the movie,” Columbus said. Such was the case with “Home Alone,” one of the biggest hits of all time, and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” also a box-office smash.

Columbus said one of the reasons he lives away from Hollywood is that “I honestly believe that by spending the summers in Chicago [where his wife’s family lives] and living in San Francisco,” he can stay in touch with what audiences respond to.

“It just balances you in a weird way,” said Columbus, who was born in Pennsylvania, where his father was a coal miner. He grew up in Ohio, where both his parents worked in factories.

“I wanted to get out so badly,” Columbus said, recalling his upbringing in Ohio. He saw lots of films as a kid, but realized when he was a high school sophomore that “movies were something I wanted to do with my life.”

He made 8-millimeter films in high school and was accepted to New York University Film School in the mid-1970s, where he roomed with Barnathan.

While working as a laborer in a factory during the summer of his sophomore year, Columbus wrote his first screenplay, “Jocks,” about high school football, which was sold but never made.

Columbus’ fourth screenplay, “Gremlins,” about furry little creatures, was passed on by dozens of producers before Steven Spielberg read and optioned it.

After graduating from NYU, Columbus and his then-new wife moved to Los Angeles for about 15 months, during which time he wrote “The Goonies” and “Young Sherlock Holmes” for Spielberg.

Then Spielberg asked him to write “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” an experience Columbus says was a disaster.

“I was 23 years old, and I was put in this room with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who were my idols, and I hung on every word they said. I typed it all out exactly as they said it. The script had no heart, no soul. . . . I learned that if I wanted to survive in this business, I had to do films I wanted to do and work without feeling that kind of pressure.”

Columbus, who made his directorial debut with Disney’s 1987 release “Adventures in Babysitting,” said that “Bicentennial Man” helped him recall the reasons he originally wanted to make movies.

“It opened up a whole new world for me in the sense that I went back 20 years to the movies I love, which were the old Hammer [Studios] horror films and science fiction films.”