Producer of Cats: We Didn’t Have Quite Enough Time
The movie version of Cats has failed to live up to expectations at the box office, taking just $6.5m (£5m) at the North American box office.
The $100m (£77m) film, which was expected to make double that amount, debuted fourth on the US chart. In the UK and Ireland, it grossed £3.4m, having been mercilessly panned by critics.
Ikon London Magazine spoke to the producer of Cats Jo Burn about working on the production ahead of the UK premiere. “Hopefully, it will be as spectacular as we thought it was going to be when we were making it. That’s what I would say. We shot a really beautiful film with a lot of visual effects so we will see how good will the visual effects are in the end.”
Jo further confirmed. “I thought we didn’t have enough time. Quite tight time anyway so fingers crossed. But I think it doesn’t matter because there are songs and dance and the set and everything is just going to create [the atmosphere] and we had a very talented cast.”
The Computer Generated Graphics (CGI) was actually so poor that according to Hollywood Reporter (THR), an updated print of Cats was sent out to cinemas one week after the original release, on Friday, 20 December. THR reported that the film’s director, Tom Hooper, had ordered re-edits to his film with “some improved visual effects”, ready for release.
It is highly unusual for a finished title already on release to be altered in this way.
The movie has an all-star cast that includes Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, Rebel Wilson and Jason Derulo and is based on the hit stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The director Hooper, who made Oscar-winning film The King’s Speech, has been open about the fact that he only just managed to finish his CGI-heavy movie before its world premiere in New York.
Cats started on a bad footing even before release, with critics almost unanimously branding it a flop, even though social media reaction after the premiere had been more flattering.
Editor in Chief of Ikon London Magazine, journalist, film producer and founder of The DAFTA Film Awards (The DAFTAs).