Cats director Tom Hooper has admitted that the backlash the film’s trailer received led to a few changes being made behind the scenes.
Earlier this year, we got our first look at the film, showing the likes of Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Idris Elba and Jennifer Hudson in all their feline glory, having been reimagined as cat characters with the use of CGI.
However, while the clip had everyone talking, it probably wasn’t for the reasons anyone who worked on the film had hoped for.
In his first interview about the film, Oscar-winning filmmaker Tom Hooper has revealed that the reception to the trailer inspired some tweaks to the Cats’ character designs.
“We’d only finished shooting in March, so all the visual effects were at quite an early stage,” he told Empire magazine of the trailer, which was released in July.
“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.”
He added that the negative reception was not something he’d prepared himself for, revealing: “I was just so fascinated because I didn’t think it was controversial at all. So it was quite entertaining. Cats was apparently the number-one trending topic in the world, for a good few hours at least.”
Tom previously won the Academy Award for Best Director for his work on The King’s Speech, having also helmed the film version of Les Misérables and the TV series His Dark Materials.
His comments come after the team behind the upcoming Sonic The Hedgehog film went back to the drawing board after the trailer for that film was completely panned on social media.
Read Tom’s full interview in the new issue of Empire.