WHAT WENT WRONG - Cats

Episode Date: May 11, 2020

When all else fails, throw the VFX team under the bus. An exploration of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s uphill ‘Cats’ battle from the get-go, the risks of setting deadlines based on the awards season calendar and why the once massively successful broadway production bombed at the box office.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I heard it a hundred times and nobody's explained what it was. And genocles do. Jalico. I have no idea. But please cut all that out, David. Hello and welcome to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast about what went wrong in some of your favorite and least favorite movies. Yes. The goal of this podcast is not to pile on these movies.

It is simply to marvel at the fact that any of them made it to the screen at all because it is extremely difficult to get any movie made. And it's extremely difficult to get that movie that you made to be any good at all. Yeah. And we watched cats, the best musical you never saw. It's amazing. If I'm trying to break it down, if I had to sum up the plot, I would say it's a series of cats introducing themselves and their ridiculous names in a sort of audition because they're all trying to be chosen by old Deuteronomy to be the next cat to ascend to the heavy side layer for the chance at a new life, right? Sure. Okay.

I didn't understand anything that was happening in this entire movie. Well, that's my best attempt at summing up cats. So we saw it last night for the first time, and I know we're a little late to the party, but I'm glad we waited because we actually saw it at a rowdy screening at Alamo Draft House where people are going to essentially heckle and enjoy the movie. And we'll get to Kat's Path in that direction a little later in the episode. For those of you who may not know, Katz is one of the bigger box office bombs in recent history. And of course, we all saw Rebel Wilson and James Corrid didn't get up at the Oscars and basically make a joke at the VFX team's expense.

I'm going to come out right at the top and say, I don't think that's fair at all. No, I think the VFX were one of the only things that kind of worked in this movie. Well, kind of. Yeah. The operative there is kind of. The fur looked good for the most part, I thought. I was impressed. Digital fur technology

really changing the game. So my argument is that the first thing that went wrong is just trying to make a movie of cats. Like, it's not meant to be translated to the screen and a little bit of background on the musical here. It is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Weber. Yep. It premiered at the New London Theatre in London's West End in 1981

and then moved to Broadway in 1982. Now, it won three Tonys, and the original version ran for 18 years and 7,485 performances on Broadway. It was the longest running play on Broadway, or musical on Broadway, until another Andrew Lloyd Weber, the Phantom of the Opera, surpassed it.

He had had three successful musicals prior to Cats, which were Jesus Christ Superstar, which premiered in 1970, Joseph in the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which premiered 1973. Those are basically the same musical. Sure. And then Evita in 1978.

One important thing to note about those three musicals, however, is that Andrew Lloyd-Weber was collaborating with Tim Rice as his lyricist for all three. Tim Rice is a super famous lyricist. You may know him as the lyricist who worked with Elton John for Can You Feel the Love Tonight. So he gets a lot of story into his lyrics, which is missing from this movie. Yes, he does. So something happens after Evita where Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Weber decide to at least temporarily part ways. Well, Andrew Lloyd-Roeber probably wanted to make cats. And Tim Rice was like, I'm not going to do that with you. I think that may be correct. So Andrew Lloyd-Roeber decided. Weber, now without a lyricist, decides to turn to some source material for the lyrics for his next

musical. And naturally, he turns to T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's book of Practical Cats. A book that weirdly I own. Why? So when we made the movie I shot a little over a year ago, Worm, we named the production company that became the LLC associated with the movie Practical Cats. That's right. And then the producer bought me T.S. Eliot's whatever, whatever, whatever book of practical cats is a gift. I've never read it. And now I will burn it.

I do want to read you a little excerpt from Elliot's Song of the Jellicles, which that word should sound familiar to you if you sat through cats because they sing it 85 times. Yeah. I heard it 100 times and nobody's explained what it was. Jellicles do. Jellicle. I have no idea. But maybe this will help.

Jellicle cats are black and white. Jellicle cats, as I said, are small. If it happens to be a stormy night, they will practice a caper or two in the hall. If it happens, the sun is shining bright, you would say they had nothing to do at all. They are resting and saving themselves to be right for the jellicle moon and the jellicle ball. Now, when you hear that, do you think, boom, a million dollar musical? No, I thought it made a billion dollars. It's a musical.

It made a lot of money as a musical. So jellicle is not a word, obviously. Don't try to look it up. Sure is. But then they never explained what it's supposed to mean. No. In this. No, but they are all headed towards a jellical ball.

I don't know. That's... Okay. It's fine. It's like saying a frantacular car. Yeah. I have no idea what it is. Neither does Andrew Ledweber, I don't think.

So he said his mother used to read him T.S. Eliot's book as a child. And also he had a cat named Perseus growing up. And that's like, that's the only explanation I can find for. He's just like, he's got some sort of Edipoles syndrome, and he's really trying to do well by his mom, and so he decides to make cats. I guess. So a little bit of history with the T.S. Eliot book is that Walt Disney had actually approached T.S. Eliot about turning the poems into a cartoon in the like 40s or 50s. T.S. Eliot said no. And his explanation was number one, he's smart. And number two, he said he worried that they would get, quote, too pretty. Now, cut to several years later, T.S. Eliot said, Elliot has shuffled off that mortal coil and his widow just literally hands them out to the first person that shows up, which is Andrew Lloyd Weber.

Great. Yes. Okay. So when Andrew Lloyd Weber is trying to get people on board for the musical production in the West End, now he's written the score and he's like, he's playing it for a bunch of people he's trying to get on board. They're all like, what the fuck is this? Legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp was, quote, less than enthralled when it was,

was played for her, and this is my favorite major Broadway producer and director Hal Prince, who was a producer on West Side Story, Fiddler on the roof, he was the director for the original version of Cabaret. And he actually had worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber before this, plays him the score, and Hal Prince goes, Andrew, I don't understand. Is this about English politics? Are those cats Queen Victoria, Gladstone, and Disraeli? He looked at me like I had lost my mind, and after the longest pause said, Hal, this is just about cats. It's an amazing quote. So I think the lack of story is actually part of what ended up making it such a commercial success on Broadway.

One of the things people tend to highlight when they talk about why they love Cats the musical, because this is kind of the core of our episode here, is why was this thing that was such a commercial success on stage, a complete bomb in theaters? And I was talking to a friend the other day who genuinely, loves cats, and I asked why. And he said that he really loved it as a kid, that the costumes were really cool. Sure. And that when you see it in a live theater, it's an immersive, almost interactive theater experience. Do they just release cats into the audience?

No, you don't. Okay, so when you actually go see cats in the theater, they, like, crawl and meow through the aisles and, like, we'll sit on your lap. if you're lucky. And like, I mean, you know, it's, uh, I did find this. Do you know who Elaine Stritch was? Yeah. Okay.

So for those who don't know, she's a Broadway legend. She also played Jack Donagie's mom on 30 Rock and was she's so good. Wonderful. Um, she saw cats early on and she just hated it and she famously, uh, shrieked, don't you touch me as the cats crawled into the audience, which I'm, I'm right with her, uh, on that one. But so there is kind of a. a theory that the fact that there's, it's just very interactive, it's very visual, there's no

real plot, so there's nothing really to follow. So it became appealing to international tourists as well. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, because you don't necessarily have to understand English. I didn't understand a word of it. No, it doesn't really matter. You're just watching them dance around in a gigantic garbage heap. Correct. So that's actually part of the appeal. Like everything that seems like it should make it a disaster ended up making it so successful. All of these things ended up being business advantages. It's like the Blue Man Group version of it.

Yeah, it's like the Blue Man Group version of a musical. That's exactly what it is. So your criticism of the fact that it doesn't have any plot was the critics' reaction to the original West End production. The premieres were kind of a disaster. Andrew Lloyd Weber had taken out like a second mortgage on his house for this thing. Yeah, no, everybody was all in and it was like people were really worried that this was just going to be an absolute train wreck.

However, everyone who invested in the original production of cats, it is estimated that they eventually received a 3,500 percent return on their investment. Now, just to give you an idea of how much of a cultural phenomenon, the original production of cats, was, I would like to present an actual PSA, from the U.S. Department of Transportation that really and truly aired on television in the 80s. Let's go ahead and just hear this audio and remember what you're hearing is coming from humans in cat outfits. An accident. An accident. An accident. The humans had an accident. There was a child in the car. A child. A child? Cats have nine lives. Children only one. Help them live that life. Buckle them into a car seat. No one wants a child. to become our memory.

It's the best. Okay. Let's cut this before we get sued by Andrew Lloyd Weber. So this played before we saw the movie at Alamo Draft House Theater. It was absolutely mind-boggling because it is unironic the way that they do it. And it is, it's like you can see the memory thing coming from about a mile away and you just keep thinking to yourself, there's absolutely no possible way. that they're going to, they'll, they're, and then it happens. Yeah. And it's amazing. Yeah. I have to say, though, more of a plot to that PSA than to all of cats. There is actually a beginning and a middle and end with that PSA. So why anyone would think this should be a movie. I mean, this was at

the time, like, the most successful musical. So I think we can kind of excuse filmmakers and producers for thinking, is there a way to make this a movie? Because like, it's a hugely successful performance. Why would you not try to figure out a way to make it? Sure. I mean, the answer is because there's no plot, which is why it doesn't translate. But if you've seen the Cats movie in theaters, you may have noticed the Amblin Entertainment logo before the movie started. I was very surprised. Yeah. Well, there's a good reason for that. In the early 1990s, Stephen Spielberg, Amblin Entertainment, had tried to launch an animated version of Cats, and this would have been under his now defunct animation company Amblemation.

Pull it together, Chris. Oh my God. Listen. Amblemation. Well, you know, they made Balto, which I really liked. Yeah, Baltho was good. He wanted to make an animated version of Cats that would be set in World War II London during the Blitz. Sounds good.

It's interesting. There's something very post-apocalyptic about Cats as it is. So I think actually his version, had it been allowed to come to fruition, would have worked. in many ways. It would have released in 1997 had it happened, and they actually had Tom Stoppard writing the screenplay, which, for those of you who may not know, he's a playwright and also screenwriter, famous for Rosencranton, Gildenstern are dead, Shakespeare in Love, right? Yeah, so he actually would have given it a story. Well, and here is where we get to the rub of why this version did not happen. Stephen Spielberg and Tom Stoppard were adamant that it needed

to have some kind of through line. Anything. Anything. Some kind of plot to tie it together and make it make sense. Andrew Lloyd Weber is adamantly anti-plot. Because at this point, he bet everything on this play, and everyone told him it wouldn't work. And then when it did, he was double middle fingers to this guy. Fuck everyone.

I have fuck you money now. I don't need Steven Spielberg. He sucks. Cats rules. Yes. Yeah, okay. That is essentially what happened. They were trying, and also your point about it being wall-to-wall music, they were trying to get some dialogue in there. And Andrew Lloyd Weber was like, nope, more music.

I don't know how long the movie versus the show was, but yeah, it's just, there's no breathing room. It's rough. Anyway, eventually Steven Spielberg loses interest for obvious reasons. And I imagine it's Tom Stopper just being like, I can't. Which, when you have a truly amazing screenwriter and playwright bailing, it just. it should tell you something. They lost interest, and then after the box office failure of Balto, which is actually a personal favorite animated movie, Spielberg shuttered amblemation and Katz was shuttered with it. You can see some of the original concept art for his version of Cats, and it's actually pretty cool.

So I would say go ahead and look that up. Now immediately after this, with Amblemation Shuttered, the rights are back on the table. Universal, who Spielberg had a pretty good relationship with, snapped up the film rights to Cats. And who now, Amblin exists under Universal's envelope now. So that explains why you're seeing that logo. I don't know what involvement they actually had in this iteration of cats, but it would make sense that it would be there considering the earliest development was with Amblin. And so when Universal buys the rights, so that's probably late 90s or early 2000s.

Oh, it's right after. It's like 1998. So that means every year they're paying to renew those rights unless they did some sort of perpetuity deal, which would be super expensive. That's insane. So why are they just sitting on it for 20 years? Well, so they sit on it until 2013. And this is when Andrew Lloyd Webber teases that Katz the movie is back in action at Universal after that's what, like 15 years of sitting on the shelf.

Yeah. So 2013, we're getting the first inklings that, okay, something is back in action. No idea exactly what it is. If it's going to be animated or what. Now cut to 2016, Tom Hooper is confirmed as the director. Who is Tom Hooper? The King's Speech. Yeah, which he won the Oscar for...

And Le Miserab. Yeah, uh, Le Miserablesa and the Danish girl. The Danish girl, that's right. Yeah. Prestige director. Yes, the last three movies that Tom Hooper has made, all of his lead actors have won Oscars. Yeah. Like, think about that.

And the King's Speech, did that win Best Picture that year? I think it did. And it's a great movie, so that's Colin Firth wins for that one. He wins best director. Yeah. Le Miserables, obviously, Anne Hathaway wins. That's right. And that is a musical, of course, which is a...

important. I liked it. It's good. And then the Danish girl for which both Eddie Redmayne and Alicia de Kander get Oscars. That's right. Yeah. So why wouldn't people want to sign up for Tom Hooper's next movie? It's impossible to get more than like three movies in a row be great in Hollywood.

Yeah, I think he had this one coming. And I also think because he had done Les Miserables in a way that was considered very successful and very like. It was a very cinematic adaptation of the musical. Yeah. So I think he kind of got carte blanche for this. But he has a bit of a reputation for not understanding technical limitations coming into a project. Because when he did Le Miserables Rob, my understanding is he didn't fully understand why they needed to do it to a click track or backing music with an earpiece in the actor's ears. So he allowed the actors to sing freestyle on no beat.

And they had to comp the score in afterwards and follow the rhythm set by the actors. Well, that's funny because they actually spun that as kind of a positive thing when it got to the promotion of it. They said like this is all. All singing live. Every sound person involved in the project, my understanding, was losing their mind because of that. Well, so he's got a pattern of behavior then because we'll kind of get into. what happened similarly with cats. But I think the point that, like, his actors tend to win awards is important to remember when you are asking yourself why these people signed on for this movie.

Tom Hooper is an amazing direct. Let's just be clear. He's an incredible director. He's made some incredible movies. His actors have won multiple Oscars. Yeah, an actor in a musical of his won an Oscars. So I don't blame any of these people for signing up. So let's get into the cast a little bit. You have Taylor Swift as Bonn. Lombolarina. And by the way, she actually had screen tested for Epinine in Les Miserables and didn't get it. So even more incentive for her to want to be a part of this one. We have Jennifer Hudson as Grisabella. Only good part of the movie. Sort of. I mean, yeah, she did an amazing job singing memory. There is a really weird moment where after she's done singing memory the first time, she all of a sudden just drops down on all fours and like she's in some kind of werewolf movie

skaters off down in the alley. That's not her fault. It was really weird. Also a lot of snot acting from Jennifer Hudson in this. But again, she does an amazing job of singing. And one thing about her character, Grisabella does not appear in T.S. Eliot's book. That cat character and the poem that ended up inspiring memory, which is arguably the only reason that this musical is worth sort of paying attention to it is a great song.

That was a discovery that Andrew Lloyd Weber made after T.S. Eliot's widow just let him paw through all the poets' unfinished manuscripts. Andrew Lloyd Weber molesting the work of T.S.L. It's just whirling in his grave. And by the way, T.S. Eliot thought that Grizabella was too depressing for kids, which is why he left it out. Andrew Lloyd Weber was like, core of my musical. Yeah, great.

Okay, who else we got here? We have Jason Derulo. I'm so sorry. Jason Derulo as Rumtum Tugger. I don't know who he is. You do. That's the person that when we were watching it, you were like, who is this? No, I know in the movie who he is. He has an intense sexual energy, but I didn't know who Jason Derulo was before this. He's, you know, just like always auto. It's that guy. It's the, he always says his own name. I literally had no idea who he was before we did this. Okay. We have James Gordon. Let's talk about him for a few more names.

David's mad. James Corden as Bustifer Jones. Rebel Wilson as Jenny N. Dots. Also a Gumby cat. Let's keep going. We'll get back to that. Idris Elba as McCavity, Sir Ian McKellen as Gus the Theater Cat, poor sweet newcomer ballerina Francesca Hayward, and of course, Dame Judy Dench as old Deuteronomy. Okay. So it has an incredible cast and it has Tom Hooper. It has an Academy Award-winning director who has been incredibly successful with a musical.

Now we get to January 2018 and Tom Hooper starts looking into whether the movie should be entirely live action or entirely CGI or both. Unfortunately for all, he went with... Both. Indeed. Yes, he did. Also in 2018, Anne Hathaway, fresh off of her Oscar for Les Mis, passes on a role in the film due to scheduling conflicts, which there's a lot of people that leave this movie due to scheduling conflicts. Now, rehearsals begin with the cast in place. The choreographer drops out, and they wind up with Andy Blankin-Huber, who is no slouch. He is responsible for the choreography in Hamilton, among other things. But he is being pulled in last minute on the project. Sure. Principal photography begins December 12th, 2018, and wraps April 2nd, 2019. This was always going to be a VFX heavy movie. They're using motion capture on all the actors.

Some of the sets have to be digitally created. They keep throwing around the phrase digital fur technology, like it means something. Planned release for the film was December 20th, 2019, and the first trailer was set to drop July 18th, giving the poor VFX team less than three months to work. on this before the trailer dropped. This is like borderline avatar levels of of CGI that they need in this movie. Yes. Yeah.

It's like war of planet of the ape's movies where they're replacing them entirely. That's what this looks like because it's all the fur. So three months is... It's nuts. It's not doable. No. So the VFX teams behind the movie

were Technicolor subsidiaries MPC, who by the way were also responsible for John Fevereaux, the Lion King, which had come out in July, and Mill Film. Now, Mill Film is the first to start tackling the project. And they are basically handed, it's estimated like what would have or should have been about a year and a half's worth of work and asked to finish it in six months. It's also worth noting that the Lion King started principal photography in mid-2017.

It did not release until July 2019. Two years start to finish versus Katz, which gave their team one year. One year, yeah. So why are they trying to hit this crazy deadline? Well, the studio is insistent that they hit this deadline of December 20th because Katz has to drop in time to be eligible for what, Chris? Oscars! Oh, yeah.

It had to be submitted for consideration by November 15th and had to premiere before December 31st in order to remain eligible. It would be like me planning a trip to the 2024 Olympics for any event on the assumption that I would somehow qualify. But it just goes to show you it's incredibly difficult for, so if a studio, they plan their calendar years in advance. And so when they have these big tent poles, they have two, like they set a stake or they just dump it in January. Like, I think Universal did do little also.

Yes. And so that was one where they had probably planned on it premiering earlier. Yeah, that one did push. And then they reshot and then they just dumped it. We will actually probably get to that on a later episode. But so there is a Reddit thread floating around out there with some folks claiming to have worked on the VFX for this move. movie and, you know, who knows if it's 100% true, it seemed awfully accurate and from a first person and emotional perspective.

Basically, it was in response to, honestly, Rebel Wilson and James Corden coming out at the Oscars and kind of crapping on the VFX team, because, like, the reality is when you look at the timeline that they had, they did not have a chance. So according to that thread, the teams were intending to use motion capture for most of the movie, which explains why when we see the behind-the-scenes feature at there in the green suits with the balls all over them and everything. However, a lot of what they received ends up not being usable. So they end up having to roto-animate most of the movie. So just to be clear, so the way that motion capture works, there are these gray balls on these suits that the actors wear.

They use a special camera that can pick up those balls and then interpolate those inside the computer to a model. that then moves with the exact motion that the actor is doing. Right. And then just so you know, because I actually didn't know this and had to look it up for this, but roto animation is where animators trace over motion picture footage frame by frame to draw on a realistic animation. There are 24 frames in one second. Right. So imagine for an over two hour long movie.

And recent examples of what this looks like, a scanner darkly. And then going back to as far as Snow White, they actually were tracing over a live actress for that, Which is why the movement in that movie is so different from a lot of other earlier cartoons and really is incredible when you look at it. But it is not a time-saving measure. This is something that is done when you don't have another option and they had to be able to essentially paint the fur on these bodies. And so I think when people think of VFX a lot of times they think that the computer is doing the work. Yeah, it's not. In reality, with almost all VFX except for fluid simulation and air simulation, you have an, a hand.

an animator hand animating everything that you're seeing on the screen. And motion captures what saves you a lot of time there. And when you lose it, you're really back to the days of, I'm going to draw. It's like drawing in a flip book, you know, every single page, the movement. Yeah. It also should be noted that after working on Cats and the Lion King, MPC's Vancouver VFX house, where most of this work was done, was forced to shut down. Yes.

Because VFX has become so ubiquitous across pretty much. every movie at this point. There's some required. There are so many VFX houses. It's become an extremely competitive market. And the way that you compete in a competitive market, or at least the way it's happening, is that these companies are just trying to give the lowest bids every time, sometimes even giving a bid lower than they need to break even in order to just get the job. Correct. And there are a lot of VFX houses now outside of other countries, especially developing countries, where their minimum wage is drastically lower than the United States. lot of the workers, most of the workers are not unionized. They end up pulling 17-hour shifts to try to

try to hit these massive deadlines set by the studios. And it's just, it's a nightmare. So they have to shut down. And I think that's because of how taxing these two projects were, but I can't imagine that Katz was a fun time. Okay. So we've now hit the summer. The studio does a massive media push. and for some reason they feel confident that they have a viable product on their hands so they release a behind-the-scenes featurette on July 17th then on July 18th they release the trailer and what would you say the reaction to the cat's trailer was um 90% depression slash uh just cognitive dissonance 10% arousal okay great that's that's about right i think uh no one liked it. People were upset. People were all over Twitter, just crapping on the trailer. So in response to those reactions, Universal now instructs MPC to go back and take over from Mill Film and to adjust some things. For example, they made Bustopher Jones's mustache larger and quote, more comical. Chris, do you feel like that worked?

I hate James Corden now. Okay. So this is the same VFX house that handled the reworking of Sonic after that trailer dropped. So they've done it before, but it should be noted that Sonic pushed its release date back to fix the character by a lot, and they were only fixing one character. Cats continues to insist that they hit their December 20th deadline and that the animators address all of the cats, which is insane. There are like 100 cats in this movie. There's so many cats. Tom Hooper admits that the movie isn't finished until 48 hours before its premiere in London and that he had worked 36 hours straight to get it done. So if Tom Hooper worked 36 hours straight, imagine what

those poor VFX artists were going through. Yeah. The hard thing with VFX, too, to Tom Hooper's credit, you don't know if you're going to like it as the director and ultimate decision maker until you see it. And they've already done so much work on it. And so it's a brutal cycle. So the film premiered on December 20th and it only made $2.6 million on its opening day. overall on its opening weekend it makes $6.6 million. Now, that's $6.6 million on a budget of roughly $100 million, and they reportedly spent somewhere around $115 million on marketing. So, sometimes I think folks have the misconception that making your budget back

means simply making at the box office what the movie costs to make and promote. So if the movie costs, let's say, roughly $200 million to make and promote, it needs to gross $200 million worldwide. So obviously $6.6 million would be terrible. Well, the reality is you actually need to roughly gross double worldwide what it costs to make and promote your movie because you're splitting with the distributor. So Katz needed to make $400 million worldwide to be profitable. And it started off in its first weekend at $6.6 million. So the movie has come out. it's been out for a week.

Hooper's not done, though. In an unprecedented move... And it released to pretty bad reviews also. Oh, very bad, yes. So similar critical responses to the musical got. Yes, but this one was not going to recover with audience support.

So they keep working on the effects up until a week after its release when Universal sends theaters a new version of the film. Now, a source told the Hollywood reporter that, quote, there were no content changes. I don't think explaining that the additional week of work was about refining mostly small things, refining the amount of the actress performance you might see, refining lighting, refining integration, end quote.

Now that refining they're talking about, a lot of it involved removing the actors human hands that were just sticking out of their catsuits. It was fine. No, it was insane. They have human hands. They have human feet with all five toes. Like, it's just, they're like, Hobbit feet. Are you kidding? It was the most upsetting part of the movie to me. It didn't. I was fine with it. Also, the amount of times they showed the feet. Like, it didn't need. There's a lot of feet shots. There's a lot of feet. Yeah. Quentin Tarantino loved it. It's bizarre. So they send out a quote unquote better version, which like at that point, what are you doing? The movie is what it is. Yeah, leave it alone. Now, prior to its debut, Katz had made the Oscars shortlist. for VFX. But six days after premiering,

so on December 26th, Universal pulled it from their For Your Consideration page and removed the film from the For Your Consideration streaming service, six days. And this whole thing was because they were trying to hit the deadline to be eligible for an Oscar

and they pull it after six days. And they abused their VFX team, which was the only one, only category that it had made a short list for. Yes. To the point where the, VFX house had to shut its doors. Yeah. And now the VFX team

seemed to take the brunt of the mockery for the film, which is unfair because they didn't choose the look. No. And by the way, one of the, I think something that people respond to about being so weird in this movie is that unlike, you know,

on stage where they do some makeup on the cats or people to make them look like cats, there was no adjustment to the human features in this. No, yeah, that was striking. There was no, like, nose change. Their ears were now cat ears. And they put whiskers on some of them.

Yeah, on some of them. And that was it. And it was like a serial killer had, like, cut the face off of the person and glued it to a humanoid cat body suit. Yeah. And it got worse when they moved away from cats into other animals. Yeah. Chris, talk about our favorite part of the movie.

So there's a part of the movie where Rebel Wilson is dancing, and all of a sudden behind her, a curtain pulls back. And it's revealed that there is a band full of. of mice inside. But the mice are the wrong size. Everything is the wrong size. So the mice are relative to the cats, the same size that a mouse would be to a human. Yes.

So the mice are way too small. They're so small. But instead of using adult faces on the mice, they use the faces of children on the mice. So it looks like you have these cutoff telotubby face children on the mice. And it's heavily implied that they're literally singing for their lives because only of Rebel Wilson likes their performance, will she not eat them? Friends! It was like human-faced cockroaches being eaten and like screaming as they're, as she's in the

middle of a song about how fat she is. It was the weirdest thing. It was the worst sequence of the movie. No, it was the best sequence of the movie. Sure. Are you kidding? And the best. I mean, there were so many parts of it that verged on horror.

Yeah, it was just like a really weird, supposed to be funny sequence that was horrifying. Yeah. And they're also like all. slimy and it was great. That part of the movie was terrifying. According to box office mojo, cats worldwide gross to date. What do you think, Chris? Oh, I have no idea.

Worldwide? Worldwide. 75 million? Wow, you're so close. It is 72 million. Oh, wow. Yeah. Again, on a hundred million dollar budget with an under 115 million spent on marketing. It'll have a long life with VOD and stuff. Because this is going to become a cult movie. If you can embrace the insane nature of the movie, it's absolutely worth seeing. It's really disorienting watching it.

Yeah, I think that's why, like, I texted my friend after we saw it, and I was like, that was the best thing I've ever seen. And she was like, what's wrong with you? I walked out of the theater. And I think it's because she saw it in a serious theater. Yeah, if I had seen it expecting to see a movie, I would have walked out. Because there's no story. There's nothing to latch on to in the first 15 minutes.

No. Well, there's nothing to latch on to in a full two hours, I would say. Right. Yeah, so there may be a happy ending to this, which is that it really could have a second life as a cult classic, and I think it should. Oh, absolutely. Now, it did receive a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song for Taylor Swift's collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Weber. Beautiful ghosts. Remember that banger, Chris? Yeah.

However, it was also nominated for nine Razies, including a worst actress for Francesca Hayward, which makes me sad. Yeah. So, to the legacy of this movie, right? So it's becoming this cult classic. Well, here's something I hope happens. Because, you know, within less than two months of this thing premiering, Taylor Swift had already referred to it as that weird-ass film. As we've said, just cordon and rebel Wilson. Yeah, they're all stepping back from it.

Courtney and Wilson make a jab at the VFX. I hope that those people come around the other way and start supporting this as what it should be, which is a cult classic, honestly, potentially closer to the room. than to... It's a beautiful train wreck. Rocky Horror. Yeah. It's something that is just unlike anything you've ever seen. Mm-hmm.

And I just, I really hope, I hope they recoup their investment here because this was such a weird move for them to make. And, you know, God, I hope they do it again. When you make a movie, you have no idea what it's going to turn out. You know, like they have no way of seeing the VFX on the days that they're shooting with motion capture. That being said, they've seen. they've seen the musical, presumably. They read the script. You couldn't have expected this to be more comprehensible than it was.

It was what it was. But I don't know. I don't think this for the actors, like this would be career altering. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. You should be allowed to do a weird fun musical and have it be a bomb that people end up loving. Like, go see cats. Just go see it.

It's not a good time. I had a blast. Yeah. To me, really, the only thing that really went wrong is cats. Is the source material. And I would just say to everybody involved, to me, what went right, I really enjoyed most of the VFX. The cockroaches creeped me out. But I really did enjoy most of them.

I thought most of the performances were really pretty charming and were great. The other thing, I thought the dancing was really cool. But the problem I had, and I think that hindered the movie is because the cats look CGI. The dancing doesn't feel quite real. In the same way that if you watch an animated fight scene, it doesn't have the same impact as if you watch

two real people fighting in a room. Yeah, it became significantly less impressive, which is too bad because they had some of the best dancers in the world in this movie. And if you watch the behind the scenes video, you're like this dancing is amazing. Right. I mean, Francesca Hayward is an unbelievable ballerina. They also had Les Twins, who you may know from

Beyonce's, Coachella, as well as other Beyonce tours. And they are amazing and they came out and I was just like oh break dancing cats yeah because lowered the stakes of the dancing in a significant way yeah which is too bad but I would just say to everyone involved that didn't write it great job it will only help you appreciate the craftsmanship and storytelling of your favorite movies when you can see something that's such a distant miss yeah and also this has now become a cultural moment so go be a part of it. Don't miss out. Absolutely. Don't just, you know, crap on the trailer online.

No. Get out there and actually watch it. You Reddit trolls and then you can crap on the trailer. Thanks again, guys, for listening to What Went Wrong. If there are any movies you would like us to tackle, please hit us up over email or on Instagram. Check the show notes for how to reach us on those platforms. Last but not least, just remember that every movie is a miracle. And this one was a true gift. Thank you, Tom Hooper. Thanks, Tom. To support What Went Wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, subscribe on Patreon, Apple, or Spotify for $5 a month.

Patreon subscriptions also come with an ad-free RSS feed. You can also visit our website, What Went WrongPod.com, for more info. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman.