Andrew Lloyd Webber has revealed the impact of the movie adaptation of his musical Cats motivated him to buy a therapy dog.
Directed by Tom Hooper, the 2019 film starred Jennifer Hudson, James Corden, Taylor Swift and more in the story of the meeting of a group of cats to decide which of them will be reborn. The film was a box office flop and remembered as a disastrous adaptation, famed for its unusual use of CGI, which prompted the studio to release an updated version while it was still in cinemas.
Lloyd Webber, who was involved with the film, recently expressed his disdain for the movie in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, revealing he bought a pet to cope with the film’s failure. “After the appalling Cats movie, I went out and bought myself a little Havanese puppy,” he said.
“It’s my therapy dog on planes. I just write a note to the airline saying, you know, reason for dog on plane and put ‘Cats movie’. And they always come back saying, ‘No doctor’s certificate required.'”
@cbssundaymorning Andrew Lloyd Webber does not hold back how he feels about the 2019 “Cats” movie, joking that it was so traumatic he bought himself a little dog to recover. Asked what he didn’t like about the film, the composer says it could be “a very, very long list.” #andrewlloydwebber #cats #catsthemovie #composer #broadway
♬ original sound – CBS Sunday Morning
The West End mogul has criticised the film before telling Variety in 2021: “Cats was off-the-scale all wrong. There wasn’t really any understanding of why the music ticked at all. I saw it and I just thought, ‘Oh, God, no.’”
Shortly after the film’s release, James Corden admitted he hadn’t seen the film, but “I’ve heard it’s terrible.” Around the same time, Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gus The Theatre Cat in the film, defended the use of CGI.
“When it was now being done in the film, the temptation I think must have been to turn those actors into cats, like Lion King, and make them look like real cats, but they’re not real cats” he told Entertainment Weekly. “They’re people playing cats, and that is the notion of the film, and it’s been done very wittingly, I think, and particularly the dancers.”
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