Andrew Lloyd Webber Has A Belated, Hilarious Response To The Cats Movie

The 2019 film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway musical "Cats" is perhaps one of the more memorable film disasters of the past decade. In the wake of its release, to help explain what went wrong, team members that created the visual effects for the film revealed that one major contributor was a rushed production schedule, resulting in unfinished special effects making their way into the theatrical cut of the film.

Of course, lousy VFX isn't solely responsible for "Cats" bombing at the box office. There's also the fact that the movie's reputation on the internet remains less-than-stellar to this day. The scale on which "Cats" can be considered a failure transcends one issue and pervades almost every aspect of the film, as described in numerous reviews (via Rotten Tomatoes).

Though it's been nearly two years since the film's release, Webber recently shed some light on his perception of the movie, including a significant change its release inspired in his real life.

Andrew Lloyd Webber shared his thoughts about "Cats" in an interview with Variety coinciding with the upcoming October 22 reopening of "Phantom of the Opera" at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. Webber discussed film adaptations of his works, including other topics pertinent to his career, revealing that he has issues with both the film adaptations of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Phantom of the Opera."

"Cats," meanwhile, Webber described as "off-the-scale all wrong." He explained that he initially sold the rights to adapt it into a film to Amblin Entertainment, the film production company headed by Steven Spielberg before it landed in the hands of director Tom Hooper, which appears to be where the issues began.

"There wasn't really any understanding of why the music ticked at all," Webber said. "I saw it and I just thought, 'Oh, God, no.' It was the first time in my 70-odd years on this planet that I went out and bought a dog. So the one good thing to come out of it is my little Havanese puppy."

In fact, Webber recounted attempting to communicate to an airline that his new dog serves a therapeutic purpose. "The airline wrote back and said, 'Can you prove that you really need him?' And I said 'Yes, just see what Hollywood did to my musical "Cats."' Then the approval came back with a note saying, 'No doctor's report required.'"