Cats creator Andrew Lloyd Webber didn’t hold back while discussing how much he hated the 2019 film adaptation of his famed Broadway musical.
"Cats was off-the-scale all wrong," Lloyd Webber said to Variety. "There wasn’t really any understanding of why the music ticked at all. I saw it and I just thought, 'Oh, God, no.' It was the first time in my 70-odd years on this planet that I went out and bought a dog. So the one good thing to come out of it is my little Havanese puppy."
"I wrote off and said I needed him with me at all times because I’m emotionally damaged and I must have this therapy dog," added Lloyd Webber. "The airline wrote back and said, 'Can you prove that you really need him?' And I said 'Yes, just see what Hollywood did to my musical Cats.' Then the approval came back with a note saying, 'No doctor’s report required.'" Lloyd Webber also noted that Steven Spielberg almost directed an animated version of the musical before handing off the reins to Tom Hooper, who had previous success with his film adaptation of Les Misérables.
This isn't the first time Webber has slammed 2019’s Cats. The revered composer called the film "ridiculous" in an interview last year. "The problem with the film was that Tom Hooper decided that he didn’t want anybody involved in it who was involved in the original show," he said at the time.
The negative response from audiences and critics turned Cats into a box office bomb of epic proportions, with many deriding the film’s strange and unsettling visual effects. The infamous flop swept the 2020 Razzie Awards with six "wins," including Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay, Worst Director (Hooper), Worst Supporting Actor (James Corden), Worst Supporting Actress (Rebel Wilson) and Worst Screen Combo (for "any two half-feline/half-human hairballs").
In addition to Razzie winners Corden and Wilson, the cast of Cats also includes Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen and Taylor Swift. Despite his disdain for the film, Lloyd Webber is listed as an executive producer and teamed up with Swift to write an original song for the movie.
The Cats musical ran for 18 years in New York City, making it the fourth-longest-running show in Broadway history. The musical is based on the 1939 poetry collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T. S. Eliot.
Source: Variety