The Jellicle cats are out tonight. (Sorry.) According to Variety, a movie adaptation of the popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats is underway, starring—take a deep breath, everybody—Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift, James Corden, and Ian McKellen, to star. Oscar-winning filmmaker Tom Hooper is set to direct—a decision some folks might have opinions about, considering his divisive but award-winning 2012 interpretation of Les Misérables. Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) will pen the script.
Hudson is set to play Grizabella, the “Glamour Cat,” so she’ll have her shining moment with a rendition of “Memory,” the most bombastic of all musical theater power ballads. (Eat your heart out, “I Dreamed a Dream.”) It has not yet been reported who Swift, McKellen, and Corden will play, but if we had to guess, perhaps: Bombalurina, who sings “Macavity, the Mystery Cat;” Old Deuteronomy, the elderly Jellicle leader; and Gus, the theater cat, respectively?
While we’re guessing/dream-casting here, perhaps Harry Styles—a former Swiftian beau—would make a good Rum Tum Tugger, who’s a bit of a rock and roll cat. And there has to be a role here somewhere for Anne Hathaway, who won an Oscar for her turn in Hooper’s Les Mis and has excellent acting chops (plus, she’s literally already played Catwoman). Who cares which character she goes for—just get her and her post-Ocean’s 8 camp wave in this thing! She could be Jennyanydots or Shimbleshanks or Jellylorum or oh, good grief, these names really are the most ridiculous! Regardless of what actually pans out, casting-wise, you can bet Swift has ordered some sort of cameo for her two actual cats, Instagram stars Meredith and Olivia. Which—how weird would that be, by the way? To see actual cats skittering around people in cat costumes?
No matter what else happens here, this entire thing promises to be deeply, deeply strange. Who knew in this year of our lord 2018 that a Cats adaptation, in all its potentially hideous, hideous glory, was coming our way?
Of course, there is a method to this madness: Cats, the nonsensical story of a group of kitties gathering together for the Jellicle Ball, where one of them will be given an extra life by the Jellicle leader, is one of the most absurdly successful musicals of all time. A filmed version of the West End production of the musical was released in 1998. The makeup and costumes are, with all due respect, pretty grotesque, and part of the reason Cats is so reviled in certain theater corners. But you can bet that the new movie will keep that signature look, based on the last West End revival in 2016—which starred Nicole Scherzinger as Grizabella. (She later got into a feud with Webber after backing out of the Broadway revival.) So, prepare to see Hudson et al in wondrously bad feline paint and costumes, licking their paws and trying their very best not to look humiliated by the whole ordeal. The new adaptation of the musical will begin shooting in Britain in November.
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