The UK’s Daily Mail is reporting that Academy Award-winning filmmaker Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, The Danish Girl) is currently in development on a Cats movie based on the musical. The director is currently exploring whether to do the film entirely in CGI, entirely in live-action, or a combination of both ala the recent hit The Jungle Book.
First performed in 1981, “Cats” is the fourth longest-running show in Broadway as well as West End history, with a direct-to-video version of the production released in 1998. Based on T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the show is set amongst a larger- than-life junkyard playground and is alive with our favourite feline characters including Rum Tum Tugger, Mr. Mistoffelees, Macavity, Jennyanydots, Old Deuteronomy, Grizabella and Skimbleshanks.
The Jellicle Cats come out to play on one special night of the year – the night of the Jellicle Ball. One by one they tell their stories for the amusement of Old Deuteronomy, their wise and benevolent leader, who must choose one of the Cats to ascend to The Heaviside Layer and be reborn into a whole new Jellicle life.
Working Title Films, who previously worked with Hooper on the hit 2012 film adaptation of Les Miserables, will produce the Cats movie alongside Lloyd Webber. No casting has taken place yet.
