CATS Coming To The Big Screen?!

Andrew Lloyd Webber Says 'They're Talking About' It!

December 1, 2013

by Pat Cerasaro

World renown composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is currently overseeing the final rehearsals for his new West End musical STEPHEN WARD, set to begin previews later this week, but he has also just revealed a tantalizing new tidbit while making promotional appearances in support of the new project - his treasured fantasy musical CATS may be ready to journey beyond the heavyside layer all the way to Hollywood in a big screen adaptation of the feline-themed worldwide mega-hit.

Potential producers of a film adaptation of CATS at Universal already posses the rights and are more than ready to pounce on the property ever since they witnessed the worldwide success of LES MISERABLES at the domestic and international box office, according to Lloyd Webber.

Commenting on the participation of LES MISERABLES and CATS producer Cameron Mackintosh and his involvement with LES MISERABLES onstage and onscreen, Lloyd Webber asserts, "I haven't seen the [LES MISERABLES] film but it's fantastic for musicals because everybody wants to make them again. Universal has now got CATS out of the drawer in which they locked it years ago when they bought the rights and suddenly they're talking about a film."

Lloyd Webber added of the initial uncertainty of the risky and unique theatrical entity when it first premiered, "You never know in life. We never knew whether the public was going to love CATS until the moment we saw a cat go on stage. It could have been the most terrible moment of bathos in musical theatre."
Candidly observing, Lloyd Webber recalls, "I remember sitting backstage waiting for the response. Somehow we got away with it."

Just one pop culture phenomenon can change the course of a property's trajectory from dwindling returns to red hot, Lloyd Webber says - citing Susan Boyle's recent multi-platinum rendition of "I Dreamed A Dream" as instigating the momentum behind a movie musical adaptation of LES MISERABLES finally hitting the screen last year after decades in development and many false starts.

"You can never work out in life how anything's going to go. Take LES MISERABLES. Three or four years ago it was closing around the world and there was no film likely. Susan Boyle comes along and does that 'I Dreamed A Dream' and the show has now become the biggest musical around the world. Just that one little thing turned it around," Lloyd Webber says.

"She could have just as easily have gone on and done 'Memory'," Lloyd Webber remarks, ever the showman ready for his next big hit.

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