Cats (2019 film)

An animated film adaptation based on the musical was initially planned by Amblimation in the 1990s, but was abandoned with the studio's closure.[27] In December 2013, Andrew Lloyd Webber, creator and composer of the musical stage production Cats, teased that Universal Pictures, which had purchased the film rights to Cats many years earlier, was putting the project into active development.[28]

In February 2016, it was reported that Tom Hooper was in negotiations to direct the film, and was considering actresses, including Suki Waterhouse, to star.[29] In May 2016, Hooper was confirmed as director.[30]

In January 2018, Hooper and Working Title began officially casting for the film, while looking into the technical aspect of whether the film would be entirely live-action or computer generated or a mix of both, with Lloyd Webber announcing he would be writing a new song for the film adaptation.[31] On 24 October 2019, it was announced that the new song is titled "Beautiful Ghosts", written by Taylor Swift and Lloyd Webber.[32] The song will be sung by Francesca Hayward, followed later in a reprise by Judi Dench, with a credits version sung by Swift.[33] The version sung by Swift was released on 15 November 2019.[34]

In June 2018, there were reports Anne Hathaway was considered for a role in the film, but she passed due to scheduling conflict.[35] Hugh Jackman was also offered a role by Hooper, but turned it down.[36] In July 2018, Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift, James Corden, and Ian McKellen joined the cast.[37] Swift had previously tested for the role of Éponine in Tom Hooper's Les Misérables but was given the part of Bombalurina without an audition.[38]

In September 2018, Laurie Davidson and Mette Towley were cast, with Steven Spielberg announced to be executive producing.[39][40] In October 2018, Idris Elba and Judi Dench joined the cast of the film.[41][42] Dench was cast in the original stage musical, but had been forced to pull out due to a torn Achilles tendon; Lloyd Webber and Hooper decided to make Old Deuteronomy a woman and offered her the role.[43]

In November 2018, ballet dancers Francesca Hayward and Steven McRae as well as Rebel Wilson, Jason Derulo, and Robert Fairchild joined the cast of the film with rehearsals commencing at Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire, England.[44][45][46][47] Andy Blankenbuehler choreographed the film, after Wayne McGregor was forced to back out due to scheduling conflicts.[48] Blankenbuehler also choreographed the stage musical's 2016 Broadway revival. In December 2018, Les Twins and Eric Underwood joined the cast.[49]

Principal photography began on 12 December 2018,[49] and wrapped on 2 April 2019.[50] Swift said that the cast attended "cat school", in which "We would literally do hours on end of barefoot crawling on the floor, hissing at each other".[51]

Music for the film was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. A "highlights" edition of the soundtrack with a running time of 59 minutes was released on 20 December 2019, by Polydor Records and in the US by Republic Records.[52] The song "Beautiful Ghosts" by Taylor Swift, a single from the soundtrack album, was released on 15 November 2019.[53]

Cats uses extensive visual effects throughout to convert the live-action actors to computer-animated cats. Companies that worked on the film include Technicolor SA subsidiaries Mill Film and MPC.[54] To aid this, the actors performed in motion capture suits with tracking dots on their costumes and faces.[55] The bodies of the cat characters were rendered with digital fur which was blended with the actors' actual faces.[56]

Substantial work on the VFX for Cats was performed at MPC Vancouver, which had previously worked on re-doing the visual effects for Sonic the Hedgehog.[57] The film's visuals were completed just hours before its premiere.[56][58][59]

The film's original release contained numerous CGI errors and glitches, such as one scene in which Judi Dench's human hand, complete with her wedding ring, appears instead of her character's cat paw.[70] After poor reviews, Universal notified cinemas on opening day that an updated Digital Cinema Package with "some improved visual effects" would be available for download on 22 December, urging them to replace the current print as soon as possible. Studio executives and cinema owners said that the decision to release a modified version of a film already in wide release was "unheard of".[71]

Cats was released digitally on March 17, 2020 and on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on April 7 in the United States. The film was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on April 29, 2020 in Australia and on June 1, 2020 in the United Kingdom.[72]

The film’s opening credits shown on the back of the Blu-ray and DVD covers have removed Steven Spielberg’s name from the “executive producer” credits.

Cats grossed $27.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $47.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $74.6 million, against a production budget of about $95 million.[5][4] Deadline Hollywood calculated the net loss of the film to be $113.6 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.[73]

In the United States and Canada, Cats was initially projected to gross $15–20 million in its opening weekend.[74] Universal hoped that the film would appeal to young women as counterprogramming against Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and emphasized Swift in marketing; however, she did not heavily promote the film to her fans as she only appeared for one song.[58] After making $2.6 million on its opening day (including $550,000 from Thursday night previews), estimates for Cats were lowered to $7 million.[3] Even then, the film only debuted to $6.5 million, finishing fourth at the box office. The underperformance was attributed to dislike of the trailers, poor reviews of the film itself, and competition from The Rise of Skywalker.[2]

In its second weekend, Cats made $4.8 million (for a total of $8.7 million over the five-day Christmas frame), finishing in eighth place.[75] It then made $2.6 million in its third weekend, finishing tenth.[76]

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 21% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 306 reviews, with an average rating of 3.7/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Despite its fur-midable cast, this Cats adaptation is a clawful mistake that will leave most viewers begging to be put out of their mew-sery."[77] On review aggregator Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 32 out of 100 based on 51 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[78] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an average 0.5 out of 5 stars, with 30% saying they would definitely recommend it.[66]

Peter Debruge of Variety called the film "one of those once-in-a-blue-moon embarrassments that mars the résumés of great actors (poor Idris Elba, already scarred enough as the villainous Macavity) and trips up the careers of promising newcomers (like ballerina Francesca Hayward, whose wide-eyed, mouth-agape Victoria displays one expression for the entire movie)." He criticized the direction and effects, and warned that the film would appeal to furries.[79] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter felt that the film was "hobbled by a major misjudgment in its central visual concept" lamenting its execution (such as the poor proportions of the "cats" to their environments) and deeming the film "exhausting."[80] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone rated the film 0 out of 5 stars, stating it was "bizarre," had terrible special effects and made the audience "want to cry for mercy," while Hooper "traps the actors in an airless, lifeless bubble of a film that scarcely gives them room to breathe, much less develop a character."[81]

In the Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang wrote that "With its grotesque design choices and busy, metronomic editing, Cats is as uneasy on the eyes as a Hollywood spectacle can be, tumbling into an uncanny valley between mangy realism and dystopian artifice".[82] Debruge said that the film should have used "face paint and Lycra" like the musical.[79] Simran Hans of The Observer agreed that "many of its uncanny images are sure to haunt viewers for generations." Her one-star review described the film as "a clear career low" for most of the actors, wondering whether they "are aware of what they've gotten themselves into."[59] Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian agreed with the one-star rating. In a review parodying "The Naming of Cats," he criticized the visual style and particularly the character design, while lambasting the film as a "dreadful hairball of woe."[83] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times felt that Hooper had made "a robust effort" to adapt the stage musical—which "was always going to be difficult, particularly once the decision was made to create a live-action version rather than an animated one"—and "enlisted some talented performers," but that the film version suffered from a lack of the human connection that theatre involves, where performers and audience share a space, without which "all that's left are canned images of fit-looking people meowing and raising their rumps high in the air."[84]

The Hollywood Reporter named Cats one of the ten worst films of 2019,[85] Travers said it "easily scores as the bottom of the 2019 barrel—and arguably of the decade,"[81] and Adam Graham of The Detroit News said "Cats is the biggest disaster of the decade, and possibly thus far in the millennium. It's Battlefield Earth with whiskers."[86] Alex Cranz of io9 warned "I have seen sights no human should see" but said others "must witness" Hooper's, the actors', and Hollywood's hubris, citing a human being appearing in a group of cats, a cat-coloured woman without fur, and other examples of how "the shit's just not finished."[87] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe's one half-star review said "there are moments in 'Cats' I would gladly pay to unsee" and warned small children to not watch the film. He reported that the preview audience laughed like the reaction to Springtime for Hitler during Dench's "The Ad-dressing of Cats", because each pause in her lyrics seemed to be the end of the film ("at long last") before continuing.[88]

Despite the negative critical reception, the production design (particularly the set decoration), casting, and most of the performances with the musical moments received praise. Pete Hammond of Deadline complimented that Taylor Swift acquits herself nicely as Bombalurina and her signature 'Macavity' number, as well as 'Beautiful Ghosts', written by Swift and Lloyd Webber for Hayward´s number and additionally for the end credits performed by Swift herself.[89] Critic Guy Lodge called Swift "the best thing in the film" and "the one performer who completely hits their marks and pulls off the lone successful number,"[90] while critic Rebecca Lewis described Swift's performance as "one of the few genuinely good parts of the film."[91] Patrick Ryan of USA Today stated that Swift "makes the most of her brief screen time, bringing her unabating charisma to the flirtatious feline ... if there's one thing that's disappointing about Swift's performance, it's that there isn't more of it."[92] Hans said that she was the only actor "who seems to be having fun, perhaps because she only appears in the film for approximately 10 minutes."[59] Jennifer Hudson similarly received praise for her rendition of 'Memory,' with some critics describing it as "the best part" of the film[93] and "the sole musical number in the new movie that summons real feeling."[94]

Rich Juzwiak of Jezebel predicted in early January 2020 that Cats might become a cult classic like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Room, noting that sing-along screenings of the film were already taking place in Toronto and Los Angeles and were selling out.[95][96] As of February 2020 Milwaukee's Oriental Theatre, Coolidge Corner Theatre near Boston, and FilmScene in Iowa City are among notable small theaters showing Cats. Coolidge Corner gives Rocky Horror-like viewing instructions to audiences at its monthly showings.[97]

Variety reported on 26 December 2019 that Universal had removed Cats from its For Your Consideration Web page. The film was not available on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences's private streaming media platform for award contenders.[51][98]

Cats was nominated for nine Razzies and won six at the 2020 Golden Raspberry Awards ceremony,[99] including Worst Picture, Worst Director (for Hooper), and Worst Supporting Actor and Actress (for James Corden and Rebel Wilson, respectively).