"Cats" trailer tease doubles as its first FYC ad
Wednesday, July 17, 2019 at 1:15PM Universal is not fooling around with Cats. There's a (presumably) gargantuan budget on the line but an insanely high level of brand awareness will help it turn a profit and they surely know that Oscar buzz wouldn't hurt toward that goal, either. This promo for the teaser (due Friday), which has no actual footage from the movie, is playing just like an FYC ad for the film's cast and crew...
Jennifer Hudson doing her second screen musical. In both she was gifted with the awards magnet role. We'll see.
The Oscar nominating process begins 169 days from now but we guess they figured there's no time like the present? The screen adaptation of the iconic stage musical has been rumored or joked about (hi, Six Degrees of Separation) or in actual development since practically the day the stage musical opened in the summer of 1981 in London. It was an instant smash, transferring to Broadway by October 1982 and then running for an unholy length of time on both sides of the Atlantic.
Tom Hooper's last musical Les Miserables was a worldwide blockbuster ($441 million on a $61 million budget) but super polarizing. Will this one be, too?
There's not much to take away from this hard sell tease other than that they've cast a few truly excellent dancers to mix in with the less naturally gifted at movement movie stars or pop stars and that they're using real oversized props just like they did in the stage production (so that the human actors look small as the cats).
Since the trailer is coming Friday and we've been needing to revise the Oscar charts anyway, we'll have an all category wide update Saturday or Sunday, okay?
Will we get actual footage of Cats on Friday or just some title design tease with a whiff of someone singing? Stay tuned!
Reader Comments (27)
This feels like an SNL parody.
This whole thing hinges on what the cats actually look like. If their much-teased, but yet unseen technology ends up rendering ugly or creepy, uncanny valley characters, this whole project flops.
I was willing to give it a chance, but it's a snoozefest after the great Hustlers trailer.
I'm not the least bit fond of CATS but am still rooting for this - after all, if it bombs, SUNSET BLVD ain't happening.
Hated the stage play... maybe this will be better!!??
Apart from a couple of moments, I really did not get the staged version. So the film can only be... better? It will likely still be confounding. And god, all of these people. I just... can't.
Uh... no. It is a FYC ad. An ad for all of the Razzies. I hope it gets all of them cause this looks really fucking stupid. Fuck that succubus no-talent cum-bucket Taylor Swift and fuck that no-talent douchebag Jason Derulo. I piss on that motherfucker's shoes.
Would be nice to see Jennifer Hudson receive some Oscar redemption. Especially after their willingness to deny her a live performance for bigger names in the original song category. Of course all that was rectified. But having a previous Oscar win didn't seem like enough for producers.
thevoid99 - Are you ok?
P.S. would fuck the shit out if Jason Derulo
This is either going to be fabulous or a what where they thinking disaster. It might have been wiser to this as an animated film- people pretending to be animals usually works better on stage- but from the trailer they are taking it very seriously
“I think this could really only be done by a director like Tom Hooper.” 😐
I think this is going to be a fabulous disaster. The best bit in this premature FYC ad is Tom Hooper talking up the themes of the musical, which is a bit rich as it barely has any.
I saw a stage production in the '80s and then watched the filmed 1998 studio production recently (with Elaine Paige and Sir John Mills playing the Ian McKellen role), which was pretty awful. There are some good tunes but it's hamstrung by its over-reliance on the TS Eliot poems and lack of story.
There have been a couple of recent great parodies - like two songs in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend S4 and the bit in Kimmy Schmidt where Titus learns how the actors get cast on Broadway. And I'm sure there will be many more in the coming months.
Jennifer Hudson's acting is as stiff as a pole especially her line reading. No more Oscars please till she improves on her acting.
@beyaccount-Of course you'd fuck that no-talent shit because you're a fucking moron like the rest of you goddamn shit-for-brains millennials. Fortunately, one city didn't think he was all that and they booed the shit out of him. I forgot what city it was but I remembered it was in Thanksgiving.
Thevoid99 -- please refrain from attacking other commenters. It's not a good look. It's ridiculous to hurl invectives at people with no provocation.
The production design looks marvelously tacky. If this is going to be a disaster, I'm at least curious to see which stars fare best. Swift's specific charisma just requires a tailored role (heh) or talented director; Dench, McKellan and Elba are pros and they've done worse.
I’m a no.
Tom Hooper. Ugh.
Like a certain TV show reminded us, you have to take the bad with the good. If you want Sunset Blvd and Wicked and Book of Mormon and The Cher Show and Hamilton and....., then you find a way to support this this Christmas.
"Cats" was my first Broadway experience (Michael Bennett's funeral was that day, or else I would have seen "A Chorus Line") and I was front row center... and bored to death.
BUT I will be there to see this, because I DO want to see all of the above on the Big Screen, and more...
Be nice.
Excuse me, but as a huge fan of "Black Nativity" I'll point out that Jennifer Hudson has done more than two screen musicals.
The official trailer is here a day early: https://youtu.be/FtSd844cI7U.
Yikes.
I just saw the trailer and it looks both fabulous and ridiculous
Why does J Hudson always tends to oversing? Goodness, the song Memory is supposed to be melancholic and introspective if you have watched the Broadway show. Her version is like 'hear me I have the pipes to blast this song into space!' Awful, simply awful. Listen to Barbra Streisand's take and you see who the real actress is.
The trailer is an abomination. Like Lucy Mame bad which is still the standard metric.
I already watch the trailer. The choreography looks good but is still a little bizarre for me. I think would it be terrific an adaptation in stop-motion animation.
Does Jason Derulo say his full name at the beginning of his number.