Robin Williams Quit Marvel's Howard The Duck Movie After 3 Days

[Animous]

The late, great actor Robin Williams quit Howard the Duck after only three days of filming. Howard the Duck was the first major attempt at making a movie based around a Marvel comics character and was released in theaters on August 1, 1986. Despite being produced by George Lucas at the height of his Star Wars and Indiana Jones popularity, the film was a critical and box-office disappointment that has often been put on many worst comic book adaptation lists.

One person who realized the writing was on the wall for Howard the Duck was Williams himself. At the time famous for his role on the hit series, Mork and Mindy, Williams was a popular stand-up comedian who would go on to have a successful run of family films in the 1990s with Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Jumanji, just to name a few. The actor was known for his improvisational skills and high-energy performances that would go on to inspire an entire generation of comedic actors. Given that Williams' Julliard classmate and close friend Christopher Reeve was famous for the role of Superman, it made a sort of comedic cosmic sense that Williams would play a role in DC's comics competitors' first film, Howard the Duck.

RELATED: Batman: Robin Williams Almost Played Joker & Riddler (Why He Didn't)

However, Robin Williams was cast as Howard the Duck for only three days before he quit the role. According to THR, Howard the Duck voice actor Chip Zien revealed that Williams left due to his frustration over trying to sync his lines up with the animatronic duck's bill. Since no voice actor was cast as Howard when production started, the puppeteers read the lines with a bland delivery that limited the fast improvisational style Williams was known for. Zien recalls what he was told about the situation:

"What I was told was by the third day, Robin said, ‘I can’t do this. It is insane. I can’t get the rhythm of this. I am being confined. I am being handcuffed in order to match the flapping duck’s bill.'”

Zien would eventually replace Williams as the voice of Howard the Duck. Many would say Williams made the right call to leave the project as it was a low mark on the resumes of many of the people involved. Williams' career did not take much of a hit, though, as the next year he starred in Good Morning, Vietnam, and two years later would star in Dead Poet's Society, showcasing his range as a dramatic actor. There didn't appear to be any hard feelings between Williams and Howard the Duck producer, George Lucas, as Williams would go on to star in films from two of Lucas' closest friends: Steven Speilberg's Hook in 1991 and Francis Ford Coppola's Jack in 1996.

On August 1, 2014, 28 years after his first and only solo film, Howard the Duck made his grand return to the big screen with a cameo appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy. Sadly, ten days later, the world would lose Robin Williams as he passed away at the age of 63. Williams left behind a legacy of impressive films that continue to endure as generation after generation comes to discover them, and the legacy lives on in the remake of Aladdin and the sequels to Jumanji. Howard the Duck may have disappointed at the box office, but it'll be interesting to see what Marvel does with the character next as he's set to make an appearance in the upcoming MCU series, What If...?

[Silent Watcher]

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