While releasing CATS the same weekend as STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, makes no sense from a box office perspective, it does from an award season perspective. Director Tom Hooper's last three movies (THE KING'S SPEECH, LES MISERABLES, and THE DANISH GIRL) previously received similar award season release dates. The decision paid off in spades as all three of those films were nominated for multiple Academy Awards. Universal Pictures thought they had a similar situation with CATS and why shouldn't they have? Hooper's track record speaks for itself.
Then CATS was released and people lost their ever-loving minds.
A catastrophic flop both financially and critically, the film has been catnip for virtually every film critic and…well…anyone with a Twitter account to be honest. The cat puns have been fast and furious and the memes and GIFs plentiful. Truthfully, it seems like most people were ready to pounce on this movie ever since the first nightmare-fueled trailer dropped months ago. Hell even Westworld actress Evan Rachel Wood went off on the film.
Any hope of golden trophies went out the door on December 20 and Universal Pictures has finally accepted that fact. The production company just pulled CATS from its For Your Consideration Internet page. For those of you not in the know, an FYC page lists a studio's qualifying movies for awards consideration along with a schedule of upcoming screenings in various cities. Even Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber's original song "Beautiful Ghosts" wasn't shortlisted for the Oscars. The song did however nab a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song.
Now I'm not the type of person who would ever root for a movie to fail. There's literally thousands of people involved in making a movie, people with families. No one intentionally goes out to make a bad movie (unless you're Uwe Boll) and a film's success or failure carries real financial impact for all parties involved. Having said that, I don't understand how Universal didn't see the writing on the wall with this sucker. Despite an all-star cast and an Oscar winning director, I question whether Universal really understood who they were making this film for other than hardcore musical fans. You don't sink $100 million into a musical unless you believe it will have mass appeal. Clearly CATS didn't.
You can currently catch CATS in theaters everywhere although it might not be much longer before the film slinks out of the multiplex.