Tom Hooper to direct movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Cats'

[Symbiotic]

Laser cats, no less. Plus guest appearances by Cat Stevens, Kat Dennings and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

How dare you leave out Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.

 

[Black Narcissus]

Tom Hooper has a face that says...''I do drink my own farts.''

 

[Fallen Angel]

Redmayne has already sent Hooper his new diamond encrusted Rolex.

 

[Guts]

ok im gonna be honest i read that as tobe hooper

I'm not familiar with the play. But a musical about cats with a Texas Chainsaw twist sounds interesting.

 

[Guts]

Tom Hooper has a face that says...''I do drink my own farts.''

 

[sueb1863]

Back in the late 80s there was talk about doing a movie version, and even then they didn't know exactly how to approach it. I think they were planning to animate it.Rumor was that Barbra Streisand wanted to play Grizabella, who got to sing 'Memory'.

Eventually I guess they just dropped the whole idea and released the 1998 video version of the stage show, because they probably realized that was the only form in which the material could exist.

My guess is this will never get past the talking stage.

 

[I SEE SPIDEY]

HOOPER: I know I didn't deserve to win best director over Fincher.

 

[Gold Samurai]

This is hilarious. I don't think you can treat this any way without some sense of humor.

This will be Tom Hooper's first real misstep. If he leaves before shooting that tells you what you need to know about this concept. This is a concept that just serves the stage. The only thing that this will succeed in is being a high profile failure.

So Matthew Vaughn is going to direct it now?

Or is Guillermo Del toro now?

 

[flickchick85]

Yikes. This will not be good.

 

[dude stannis]

I can only hope Ridley Scott uses this as ammunition in ripping all over Hooper when the next director's roundtable involving them is.

 

[sueb1863]

I'm surprised this would even be considered. It doesn't even really have a plot, it's mostly just a succession of very loosely connected songs in a sort of random order, punctuated with long dance intervals. There isn't much cinematic about it at all.

 

[The Guard]

They'll write some original songs to flesh out the meager plot.

 

[CaptainWagner]

This seems like something that would be a joke, like an SNL skit or something. It's quite possibly the most Tom Hooper project Tom Hooper could ever do.

 

[The Guard]

Actually it's kind of the opposite. He's big on grand themes and a detailed, nuanced story.

CATS, not so much.

 

[Boom]

One might say he is being a sour puss.

 

[Pink Ranger]

This film should involve Sidney Poitier in some way.

 

[James.B]

Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift, James Corden & Ian McKellen Line Up For ‘Cats’ Movie

https://deadline.com/2018/07/jennifer-hudson-taylor-swift-james-corden-ian-mckellen-cats-movie-andrew-lloyd-webber-1202430100/amp/
JFC.

 

[terry78]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...n-mckellen-star-cats-movie-adaptation-1128647

Taylor Swift, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen and James Corden will star.

 

[DarkKnight88]

The show was terrible. That’s why it didn’t last much beyond its 80s origins. I don’t know a single person who would name this their top musical let alone top 5. The music is good though.

 

[The Guard]

The Broadway show ran for a long, long time (4th longest run in history) and has had various revivals. It continues to be a fairly popular stage show regionally, if not a beloved one.

They'll almost have to improve the script. I think it could be an interesting experiment. The music is fantastic, and the spectacle potential for this is immense...it just has always needed a better book, though I've always been impressed at how well he adapted the book it's based on. Won't work well enough for film though without some major tweaking.

 

[sueb1863]

I'm having a very hard time visualizing this. It's a dance musical with one very famous song and no real story. None of these actors are dancers so I'm guessing they're going to axe the dancing, and there's really nothing left except for "Memory" and a ton of songs ranging from cute to not-bad to mediocre.

What are they going to use for a plot? Is this going to resemble the musical at all or are they just going to keep the best songs and make up some brand new plot to hang them on?

And Tom Hooper...he's a good director but I disagreed with quite a bit of what he did with Les Miserables. Hopefully he'll stay away from the Dutch angles.

We'll see how this goes. I enjoy the stage show but it's so theatrical that I'm not sure it can survive anywhere else.

 

[Silvermoth]

Oh well sir Ian and Jennifer Hudson! This could be fun.

I’m a huge fan of the source material (actual cats, they’re so cute!)

 

[The Shape]

Eh. I would rather they just make a new, better version of The Phantom of the Opera.

Cats is unfilmable without major story alterations...since there is no story.

 

[danoyse]

The show was terrible. That’s why it didn’t last much beyond its 80s origins. I don’t know a single person who would name this their top musical let alone top 5. The music is good though.

It was a big deal when it first opened. It was different, it was something of a spectacle at the time. Barbra Streisand made a hit out of "Memory", which certainly helped. It was part of that whole London blockbuster phenomenon that ruled Broadway in the 70s/80s/early 90s (others included Evita, Les Miz, Miss Saigon, Phantom...).

After the hype died down, it was popular with families, and even more so with tourists. I read somewhere that one of the reasons it was popular with tourists was because you didn't need to know English to enjoy it. It was all dancing and singing. And cats.

I saw it 1990, when I was in high school. The dancing was amazing, the part with pirate ship was really cool, and they let the audience go up on stage during intermission, which was neat too. "Memory" was the first time I saw an 11:00 number live, and I can't remember who played Grizabella that night, but man, she sang the hell out of it.

It was fun enough. Not one of my favorites, but it was entertaining enough. Plus, it was fun when David Letterman's show was only a few blocks away and he kept doing sketches with them. He showed the cops arresting the Rum Tum Tugger from this marquee camera one night.

I'm not sure how it will work as a movie, though. The cast sounds wild, so that has me intrigued.

The Broadway show ran for a long, long time (4th longest run in history) and has had various revivals.

It's only had one revival on Broadway, which ran last year. It closed in December. I didn't see the revival, but I heard it was pretty good.

People knock Andrew Lloyd Webber, but damn...he had 4 shows running on Broadway at the same time last year: Cats, Phantom, Sunset Blvd, and School of Rock. That's impressive.

 

[The Guard]

Eh. I would rather they just make a new, better version of The Phantom of the Opera.

Cats is unfilmable without major story alterations...since there is no story.

There's actually a fairly complex story for a musical, but it isn't conveyed in the typical way. It's essentially told through dance. And I don't think most audiences will hang on for nothing but interpretive ballet to show character development through the course of a film.

My wife was in this a few years ago, and it got to the end of Act I, and I was like "Wait...what happened?" Because the story just doesn't stick the way it's currently presented. They'll definitely make some changes for the film.