Cats director orders urgent changes as fur flies following disastrous opening weekend
‘Can you make a movie so bad the Academy takes back your Best Director Oscar? Asking for Tom Hooper’
THE film version of Cats has been urgently re-edited to improve its special effects, as its opening weekend at the box office proved to be a disaster.
The adaptation of Lord Lloyd Webber’s musical made just $10.9 million (£8.4million) worldwide at the weekend and some filmgoers reported being the only people in the screening room.
By contrast, the latest instalment in the Star Wars saga, which was released on the same day, has so far grossed $374 million at the global box office.
Cats made $4.4million on its opening weekend in the UK and Ireland. The blockbuster musical cost $100 million to make before the marketing budget was factored in.
In an unprecedented move, Universal, the Hollywood studio, told cinemas that they would be receiving an updated version of the film with “some improved visual effects”.
It is unheard of for a film to be re-edited after its release. Insiders told The Hollywood Reporter that the changes had been ordered by Tom Hooper, the director. He admitted at the film’s premiere that he had finished editing it at 8am the previous day.
The cast were filmed on set without fur, which was added digitally in the post-production process. However, an image widely circulated on social media showed Dame Judi Dench, who plays Old Deuteronomy, with a human hand emerging from her fur costume, clearly displaying her wedding ring.
The poor box office showing dashed Universal’s hopes that the film would become a favourite with cinema goers despite the critical mauling.
Tim Robey, who reviewed the film for The Daily Telegraph, called it “a sinister, all-time disaster from which no one emerges unscathed”.
Another reviewer described it as “the worst thing to happen to cats since dogs”, while one critic asked: “Can you make a movie so bad that the Academy takes back your Best Director Oscar? Asking for Tom Hooper.” Hooper won the award in 2011 for The King’s Speech.
The critic for RTE in Ireland wrote: “First off, full disclosure – I am not a cat person. Second off – after watching this frankly mortifying film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, I’m not altogether sure I am a movie person any more either.”