After Scathing Reviews, "Cats" Gets A Late Edit Days After Its Theater Debut Because It Flopped

An updated version of the film "Cats" with ‘Improved Visual Effects’ is probably for the best given everyone's thoughts on it

Elana

• Published in News
• December 26, 2019

Based on the 1939 poetry collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, Cats became a stage musical composed by the famous Andrew Lloyd Weber 38 years ago in 1981. Originally doubted, the musical went on to be a stunning, award-winning success that profited over $3 billion running across the world through to 2012. According to Wikipedia: "The London production ran for 21 years and 8,949 performances, while the Broadway production ran for 18 years and 7,485 performances, making Cats the longest-running musical in both theatre districts for a number of years."

Revamping the story into a star-studded and extremely expensive modern day movie has been met with nothing but criticism since the trailers first leaked and now that the movie has released in theaters to pathetic, abysmal box office reports, Universal has decided that instead of calling it quits and washing their hands of the travesty they helped create, they're going to give the movie a bit of a special effects face lift and keep pushing their luck.

In case you missed it, here is the trailer.

Reviews for the film have been devastatingly scathing.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Universal has told theaters nationwide that a new version, with “improved visual effects,” will be made available starting Sunday."

Award-winning director, Tom Hooper, has been surprisingly transparent about his "problems" reviving the musical masterpiece into a modern day movie.

At the original screening for the film, Hooper even admitted that he’d still been cutting the film mere hours before it was first shown.

Most of the criticism online has been launched in the general direction of the film's special effects, most noticeably folks are mocking the “digital fur technology,” the shockingly human-like hands for the cat characters, and of course... the butts. Normally, butts are a win-win scenario on the Internet but these disturbingly human-like butts just don't look quite right on the frisky felines.

Some updates may be beneficial, but it's hard to imagine the film is capable of recovering from the opening weekend low-blow.

"Cats earned a mere $2.6 million on its opening day — compare/contrast with The Rise of Skywalker, which on the same day made around $90 million — and scored a C+ on CinemaScore."

Purrhaps Hooper's edits will do the musical justice, purrhaps not. Only time will tell.

If you've seen the 2019 film adaptation of Cats, let us know your thoughts in the comments now! If you haven't seen it, are you going to? We want to hear from you!

Elana