Here’s a question I’ve been asking on this site for months now: what the f-ck is this Cats movie? The Cats movie comes out just before Christmas. Like, pretty much at the same time as Star Wars: Episode IX. They’re counterprogramming Star Wars with Cats. OK.
Tom Hooper is directing. Jennifer Hudson, Idris Elba, James Corden, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson, and Taylor Swift are starring. Or… prowling. SORRY. I couldn’t help myself.
Filming wrapped last month and there was a Cats presentation at CinemaCon in Vegas a couple of days ago. They weren’t ready to show any footage so they screened some behind-the-scenes action with the actors dancing and running around the set with motion-caption suits on instead. Tom Hooper said they were using “digital fur technology” to turn them fully into their characters. Again. WHAT THE F-CK IS THIS MOVIE?! Is DAME JUDI DENCH going to be clawing at the camera with her cat paws?
And that’s not all!
The actual sets are super-sized so that a chair, for example, isn’t a regular chair but a giant chair, so that everything feels “cat-sized”. As Idris Elba said during the presentation video, "Everything is three or four times bigger than it would usually be, from a cat perspective".
Andy Blankenbuehler, who worked on Hamilton, is the choreographer. Apparently the actor-cats were trained in all forms of dance, from ballet to jazz to hip-hop. So Idris Elba is going to be hip-hop feline dancing underneath a layer of digital fur technology? Is your head about to pop off? Because I think mine just exploded trying to wrap itself around this information.
It’s f-cking bonkers. So, yeah, naturally, I’m in. Like I actually can’t wait to see if this will be as crazy as it sounds or if I’ll be eating my own sh-t afterwards all, OMG they pulled it off, that was so good.
Here’s Jennifer Hudson at CinemaCon where she sang “Memory”. At least we know the music won’t be an issue.
