Well this is a disaster. Cats has dealt with bad buzz since the release of its first trailer & it only became direr when the film landed with a thud with a 19% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes. Universal is hoping or delusional that a version of the film with improved effects will help matters so the studio sent out a memo to theaters saying they will be sending out a new version of the big-screen adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical that includes “improved visual effects.”
Here is the memo provided by Universal:
Hello – please share the following with your theater operations staff and managers:
DCDC and Deluxe-Technicolor will be sending updated FTR-20 SMPTE DCPs of Cats which include some improved visual effects. The runtime is unchanged.
FTR-20 will be available on DCDC satellite servers on Sunday 12/22 (satellite folder name: CatsSMPTEUSRelV2)
Non-satellite sites should receive hard drives on Tuesday 12/24
FTR-20 keys will go out Monday 12/23 at the latest
Please ingest the content as soon as you receive it, and replace FTR-12 with these updated FTR-20 DCPs.
The new versions were said to be released as early as yesterday so if you were one of the very few people who saw the film opening night & Saturday, you probably didn’t see the “best” version of the movie. I say very few people saw Cats because the film opened to a mere $6.5 million and with a reported $80-90 million budget, that’s a horrible start, even during the more robust month of December.
Director Tom Hopper was working on visual effects for the film until the New York premiere on December 16. I hear it was down to the wire to get it done in time & apparently that version wasn’t the film at its best given the fact that Universal is releasing an “improved” version. Needless to say, not much can save this debacle but kudos to Universal for trying.
Cats, if you dare to see it, is in theaters now.
