Let's all pay our condolences to Cats as it fades away to the Heaviside Layer.
The film adaptation of the famous Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical finally hit theatres
on December 20th, 2019, and audiences have been passionately avoiding the film ever since.
Here's what went wrong with Cats.
Well, the box office numbers have rolled in for director Tom Hooper's misguided movie-musical,
and let it suffice to say, they aren't exactly the cat's meow.
In fact, they're absolutely abysmal.
Initial box office estimates predicted that Cats would earn about $15 million on its opening
weekend.
But when the film opened - against Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, no less - it pulled
in a dismal $6.5 million domestically.
That is to say, the box office returns were effectively in the litter box.
"Cats!
Barely scratching by.
The star-studded film managed just $6.5 million dollars."
"Mrrrw!"
Such numbers would be acceptable for, say, a limited-release art film.
But it's completely unacceptable for a tentpole Christmas release packed with triple-A talent
- particularly since the film cost approximately $100 million to make.
A poor outcome for Cats was rather expected, but the severity of its opening weekend failure
is still rather surprising.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a serious box office bomb we're talking
about here… a major cinematic cat-astrophe.
$2.2 million dollars on a wide-release opening day means that basically no one saw this movie.
Meanwhile, pretty much everyone on the planet knew the film was happening.
Seems like morbid curiosity just wasn't enough to get people into those seats.
That lack of curiosity killed Cats.
We can't talk about Cats without talking about that soul-bending teaser trailer, which was
released back in July 2019.
What a day that was for social media.
They say that "all press is good press," but they clearly hadn't seen the Cats teaser trailer
before making that statement.
Many people reacted with abject horror when they got their first look at the sprightly
CGI cats, recoiling in horror at all the chirpy celebrity faces grafted onto furry bodies.
Some folks hoped against hope that the film was still very much a work in progress.
"I'm not sure, are they not done?
Like some of the shots, the one shot of Jennifer Hudson right at the ending, it looks really
bad.
I'm wondering, have they not done the visual effects yet?"
A film is basically doomed if the trailer becomes a meme based on how dreadful it is
- especially if that trailer is released less than six months before the movie comes out.
And people weren't exactly won over when the second full Cats trailer was released in November
2019.
We imagine they were still trying to process what they'd witnessed over the summer.
When a film relies heavily on post-production VFX, it takes a lot of time to get just right.
Rushing the process is a really bad idea, particularly when the filmmakers are busy
hailing the special effects as game-changing and groundbreaking.
Well, it sounds like a very special kind of technology was used for this film:
"We've used digital fur technology to create the most perfect covering of fur."
"These are people… but they're cats!
And this is kind-of blowing my mind."
Pixar movies have an average development cycle of four to seven years from concept design
to finished animation.
On the other hand, Cats only had seven months of post-production to render everything.
Principal photography began back in December 2018 and wrapped in April 2019.
Universal Pictures released the teaser trailer a mere three months after that, and Cats was
released to theatres in December 2019 - just a little over a year after principal photography
commenced.
That's an absolutely insane schedule - particularly for a film that requires so much post-production
work.
Reviews for Cats aren't just disparaging - they're devastating.
Upon its release, critics pounced upon the film with sheer sadistic glee, and you can't
really blame them.
As of the making of this video, Cats' Rotten Tomatoes score stands at a resolutely sad-making
18 percent - and the selected pull quotes are essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet
of brutality.
Even Rolling Stone's overly precious reviewer Peter Travers had his claws out, writing:
"This all-star, all-awful screen take on the smash Broadway musical easily scores as the
worst movie of the year and arguably the decade.
Cats shouldn't happen to a dog."
And Variety's chief film critic Peter Debruge certainly wasn't any kinder:
"It is ugly.
It is badly directed.
It is an eyesore.
And these cats look terrible."
Shortly after Cats was released, the absolutely unthinkable happened.
As Gizmodo put it:
"In an unprecedented move, Universal is sending theaters a patched version of Cats."
You heard that correctly.
On the same day the film hit theaters, Universal emailed thousands of theaters and let them
know that a rush package containing an updated version of the film would be arriving sometime
in the next couple of days.
"Seems like they scrambled and they rushed to re-edit the film."
In fact, as of the making of this video, there's even a viral tweet that shows viewers how
to know whether they're watching Cats 1.0 or what we'll go ahead and call Cats 1.01.
The tweet reads:
"How do you know if you have the old version?
Look for Judi Dench’s human hand, wedding ring and all."
What a time to be alive.
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