Musicals have always been big in Hollywood, with plenty of stage hits getting the big screen treatment as well. What’s surprising is that one of the biggest musicals of all time has never been turned into a movie. Well that’s about to change as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats is set to start filming this fall, and the cast is turning heads.
Working Title and Universal’s Cats will star Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift, James Corden and Ian McKellen, and it is expected that additional casting announcements will be coming soon. Hudson is rumoured to be playing Grizabella. It’s been known for awhile that Oscar winning director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) is directing the film, which has been adapted by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot). Hooper has been working on getting things ready for over two years now, but it’s finally going to move to the filming stage. Word is it will shot in the UK.
This will be the second time Universal and Working Title have worked with Hooper, as he directed the 2012 adaption of Les Miserables. It’s hoped that Cats will have similar results. After all the stage show has a huge following, being the fourth-longest-running show in Broadway history and the sixth-longest-running in London’s West End.
If you haven’t seen the play before, the story following a tribe of cats over the course of one night as they try to decide which of their group will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life. The play is known for it’s hit songs including Memories.
Photo: Effie on Wikipedia
