Director Tom Hooper changed ‘Cats’ CGI after backlash

When Cats’ trailer was released back in July, it provoked such a huge response from the internet that it instantly became one of the most anticipated movies of 2019.

But while there are undoubtedly many fans of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that can’t wait to see what Tom Hooper, the Academy Award winning director of The King’s Speech, does with the material, some people weren’t so sure about what they saw.

The good people of the world wide web primarily created this uproar because of how the likes of Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, and Taylor Swift had been turned into felines.

Rather than dismissing these criticisms and comments, Hooper has revealed that he actually listened and took notes from them instead. So much so, that Hooper and the creative team behind Cats actually changed the visual effects on the film as a result.

Read More: Idris Elba can't explain the plot of Cats, even though he's in it

“We’d only finished shooting in March, so all the visual effects [in the trailer] were at quite an early stage. Possibly there were, in the extremity in some of the responses, some clues in how to keep evolving [the production].”

“When you watch the finished film, you’ll see that some of the designs of the cats have moved on since then, and certainly our understanding of how to use the technology to make them work has gone up, too.”

Read More: Taylor Swift to collaborate with Andrew Lloyd-Webber on song for 'Cats' movie

Hooper clearly rather enjoyed that Cats had become a viral topic, telling Empire that he was “fascinated because [he] didn’t think it was controversial at all.”

We’ll get to see whether Cats was worth all this hassle, and discover just what movie fans actually think of the musical, when it is released on 20 December.