In the latest episode of our ongoing series, Screen Rant’s Ryan George reveals what (probably) happened in the pitch meeting for Tom Hooper’s big screen adaptation of Cats – and somewhere along the way, the word “Jellicle” loses all meaning.
Based on a collection of poems by T.S. Elliot and somehow transformed into a stage musical by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Cats is about a tribe called the Jellicle Cats, who are all competing to be the one chosen for death by Judi Dench’s Old Deuteronomy. Actually, the Jellicle Cats think of it as ascending to a plane called the “Heaviside Layer,” where they will be reborn into a new life – something that they all desperately want. This includes cats who already seem to have a pretty good life, like the magical cats Mister Mistoffelees and Macavity, and the contented house cat Jennyanydots, who commands an army of cockroaches and mice.
The first trailer for Cats was so weird and vaguely terrifying that it had the internet completely enthralled – but unfortunately for the Jellicles, that fascination hasn’t translated into a box office hit. Cats bravely went up against Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and was left out in the cold with a dismal $6.5 million opening weekend. If you were one of the many people who decided to skip seeing Cats in the theater, check out the pitch meeting below for a summary of the plot… such as it is.
After the none-too-flattering feedback that the first trailer got, attempts were made to improve the CGI in Cats. These efforts not only ran right up to release, but continued after the movie’s release, with a new version of the movie sent to theaters after Cats had already started playing. Whatever tweaks might have been made, however, it’s safe to say that they weren’t enough to fix the biggest problem with Cats, which is now looking to be a $71 million loss for Universal Pictures.
If nothing else, Hooper’s movie stands out for being one of the weirdest movies of the year, and may gain popularity after its home release as a drinking game movie (or, at the very least, an endless source of memes). Meanwhile, Universal is already making plans for another big musical adaptation in 2021: Wicked. Hopefully a movie about a witch will manage to be slightly less terrifying than the movie with singing, dancing, CGI cat-human hybrids.
