The upcoming feature film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical, Cats, has found it’s felines. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Hudson, James Corden and Ian McKellen have all signed on to the musical adaptation. Academy Award winner Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) is set to direct the film from a script by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot). Production will reportedly begin at the end of this year in the UK.
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 favorite 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.
