Tom Hooper's Film Adaptation of The Broadway Musical CATS Looks Stunning and Will Feature Motion-Capture Performances
I’ve been really curious about seeing how director Tom Hooper handles the feature film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Cats. During the Universal Pictures presentation at CinemaCon, we got a first behind-the-scene look at the production, and I have to say… it looks like it’s going to be stunning!
Cats has put together an incredible cast of talent that includes Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift, James Corden, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, Rebel Wilson and Idris Elba. This whole thing sounds like it is going to be a super strange production, but it looks like Hooper is going to do some surprisingly cool things with it. All the actors involved are very excited to be a part of this production.
For those of you thinking that the movie is going to feature all of these actors running around, singing, and dancing in furry spandex costumes, you would be wrong. It was revealed at the presentation that Hooper will be very visual effects heavy and all of the actors will be wearing spandex motion-capture suits instead and their cat characters will be brought to life with the magic of CGI technology. Hooper and his creative team are using “digital fur technology to create the most perfect covering of fur.”
Not only that, but they went ahead and built giant over-sized sets for the film so that the cat characters actually look like they are the size of cats! I know some of you might be rolling your eyes at this, but the sets are seriously beautiful. It was very interesting seeing the actors performing with these over-sized sets and props, and it reminded me of how much I love the magic of filmmaking.
The film is going to be ambitiously big in scope and fans of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats are going to love it. I’m not sure what the non-fans are going to think, but I hope that they give it a shot.
The presentation ended with Jennifer Hudson performing one of the more popular songs in the musical, “Memory” and she knocked it out of the park! Holy shit, she was great! That performance alone was enough to sell me on this film! Hopefully she delivers the exact same performance in the film!
The musical tells the crazy story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the night they make what is known as "the Jellicle choice" and decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life.
The screenplay for the film is being written by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot). Cats opens in theaters December 20, 2019.