Given that the final message of Cats is that “a cat is not a dog” (Thanks, Dame Judi!) it seems appropriate to further dogpile on failed musical. According to Deadline, Tom Hooper’s latest is projected to lose Universal at least $70M when all is said and done. That buys a lot of catnip.
This guesstimate is based on around the idea of Cats making $100M worldwide, plus $55M from rentals, premium cable/streaming, etc. I would argue that number will be higher simply because of the curiosity factor. People may not have been willing to buy a ticket, but they’ll rent the shit out of this thing, get high to it, and repeat. Plus, I don’t know if future sales from midnight screenings, paired up with The Room or Rocky Horror or something else bizarre, can be factored in. The budget was roughly $100M, and if you’re including advertising costs it goes up to $225M which gives us the approximate $70M loss.
It’s worth noting that Variety is projecting losses over $100M, basing that largely on the movie’s pathetic $38M haul after just two weeks.
These things are always iffy, and like I said, I kinda expect this movie to have a long post-theatrical life as a cult favorite. The point is Cats, as of right now, is a monumental fail. Will we still look at it that way in ten or twenty years? Maybe Old Deuteronomy can look into the future and let us know?
