Unfortunately, not every filmmaker’s dreams came true in 2019. Here are the year’s biggest flops and our guess as to why things went so wrong.

Cats

With a production budget of $100 million and an all-star cast, director Tom Hooper was hoping to hit the jackpot with his adaptation of the popular musical, Cats. Unfortunately, the movie took in shy of $11 million, making it one of the biggest flops of the year. 

Why It Flopped: Cats was doomed to flop the moment the first trailer started trending on social media for all the wrong reasons. The CGI human-cat-hybrids may have looked impressive, but they gave people the creeps. It’s no wonder hardly anyone went to see the movie.

Dark Phoenix

Sophie Turner’s debut in the X-Men universe did not pull in the viewers the producers had hoped. The film pulled in just $252 million at the box office, resulting in an estimated loss of $120 million. 

Why It Flopped: 2019 was the year of Marvel. After Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel, viewers had superhero fatigue. The summer release of the film was just poor timing. Coupled with the fact the film got bad reviews, there just wasn’t enough incentive for fans to go and see the movie. 

Charlie’s Angels

The Charlie’s Angels reboot pulled in just $57 million at the box office. The feminist reboot was meant to rewrite the story in a way that was empowering for women, but people didn’t bite.

Why It Flopped: Elizabeth Banks’ efforts at a feminist reboot were admirable, but the truth is, Charlie’s Angels is a story that just doesn’t work in 2019/20. The film was created as a male fantasy and when Banks tried to adapt it for a new generation, we discovered that the story itself just isn’t that interesting. And so it flopped.

The post These Were the Biggest Films Flops in 2019 appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Multiple outlets report that the big-screen adaptation of Cats directed by To Hooper is heading for a major box office loss. According to rival studio executives and based off a production cost of $90 million net, the film is bound to lose anywhere between $70-$100 million in theatrical losses. 

The film was off to a bad start even before it hit theaters with its use of CGI technology to turn its cast into felines. And so from the very beginning, the film never gained any traction in the box office, opening to a $6.5 million domestic debut. 

The film stars Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, and Idris Elba, who transformed into a tribe of furry felines. 

The post “Cats” Was a Major Box Office Flop appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Of course, the divisive nature of the trailer did not harm ticket sales. Our curiosity got the better of us and we all headed to the movie theater to see the bizarre star-studded classic reimagined with the latest CGI technology. The likes of Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, and Ezra Elba all suited up (or rather down) for the highly-anticipated Tom Hooper feature, but unfortunately, even Jennifer Hudson’s vocals couldn’t save this weird and whacky flick from disaster.

First, the cats are even more horrifying in the movie than they are in the trailer. It is impossible to get into the fantastical spirit of the movie because the cats just look too humanlike. These uncanny human-cat-hybrids prance around an apocalyptic-looking London, making us wonder if these “cats” are really mutants emerging from the rubble.

Similarly, the plot lives up to expectations. The “Cats” stage adaptation is based on a poem by T.S. Eliot. Subsequently, the tale is more atmospheric than action-packed and lacks a strong plot. This problem is not tackled in the film, which merely introduces different cats in the form of a song. Given that each cat looks like a surreal cat-human-hybrid, this is nothing to sing about.

That said, it’s hard to argue against the fact that the movie is visually spectacular. The setting is bright and exciting and if realism is what the costume designers were aiming for, they have certainly achieved that. 

The trouble is, we instinctively flinch at things that aren’t human that look too humanlike. The human-cat-hybrids sit somewhere in the uncanny valley, causing audiences to feel uncomfortable as our brains try to suss whether these weird creatures are threatening. And ultimately, this was Hooper’s biggest failure. Cats was thus doomed to fail when audiences recoiled in horror at the first trailer. 

2/5

The post Here’s What We Thought About “Cats” appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The feature adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s acclaimed musical has opened to the purr of 6.5 million, well below its 10-15 million projections. 

The film features a stellar cast that includes Taylor Swift, Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo, and James Corden, who donned feline features thanks to “digital fur technology.” As early as the first teaser dropped, the creepy visuals upended the internet and now that the film has hit theaters, it is still sending moviegoers into a total frenzy. 

“The [social media] blowback was massive and that did hurt it,” said Jeff Bock, a media analyst with Exhibitor Relations.

No doubt an odd creative choice for the musical-veteran studio, Universal, which credits include the Mamma Mia musical franchise and the Oscar-winning Les Miserables. 

The post “Cats” Bombs at the Box Office appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The pop icon who stars in Tom Hooper’s upcoming big-screen adaptation of the long-running musical from Andrew Lloyd Webber is here to calm fans and moviegoers — she loved the “weirdness” of the film.

Taylor Swift who is gracing the cover of British Vogue’s January, promoting the new Cats movie, said that she “really had an amazing time with Cats. I think I loved the weirdness of it. I loved how I felt I’d never get another opportunity to be like this in my life.”

It’s as if Swift missed the who digital fur technology ordeal which sent the entire internet into a complete frenzy! At lest her co-star Rebel Wilson acknowledged that “some people found [the trailer] a bit creepy ’cause we’re people but we look a bit like cats dancing around.”  

The film also stars Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, and James Corden. 

The post Taylor Swift Talks About the ”Weirdness” of “Cats” appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

In fact, many fans took to Twitter immediately after the trailer’s release to voice their opinions. The film, which features an all-star cast including Taylor Swift and Jennifer Hudson, began trending not because people were excited, but because they were horrified.

If you haven’t yet seen the trailer, you can watch it here before you read any further:

Among the YouTube comments, a user describes the teaser as “Nightmare fuel at its finest” while another clarifies: “It looks like someone skinned their faces and stretched it over some unnatural humanoid cat figure, making it look flat and downright weird.”

The feline effect was achieved using “digital fur technology.” This means that the stars retain their human movement and human faces, but have the furry body of a cat edited on in post-production. But why is the result giving people the creeps?

If you read our article on dolls in movies last week, you might recall our conversation on the uncanny valley. This is the category of non-human things that look semi-realistically human. Anabelle the horrifying doll, for example, does not look unrealistic enough to be categorically fake, but does not look human enough for us to know how to read it.

In the Cats trailer, these “digital fur” hybrids fall somewhere between our idea of a human and something of an entirely different entity. This uncertainty leaves us with the feeling that something is not quite right. We don’t know what characteristics to assign to the hybrids because they are not catlike enough to be cats but they’re not human enough to be humans. Our brains just don’t know what to do with that information.

Ultimately, the Cats trailer takes place in the uncanny valley and while this has inevitably caused many to shudder, the movie is not necessarily doomed to fail. The hybrid creatures have evoked a peculiar curiosity within us and if we can run with it, the movie may be a bizarrely satisfying experience. Check back in December for our full review.

The post Let’s Talk About the Polarizing “Cats” Trailer appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The trailer introduces the all-star cast in full-on cat costumes. Well, the fur was in fact digitally overlaid on their bodies in post-production by Hooper’s VFX team, but still.

The highly-anticipated feature stars the likes of Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, James Corden, Rebel Wilson, and Jeniffer Hudson. In other words, the cast list is major.

The trailer also shows a clip of Hudson singing the musical’s biggest number “Memory.” Her performance appears to be spectacular, as does the rest of the movie, only we can’t help but feel it’s going to split people down the middle.

Although the visuals already promise to be spectacular, there is something a little, shall we say, uncanny about the cats. Seeing our favorite stars dressed as felines with #digitalfurtechnology (seriously, check out the hashtag on Twitter because the feed is hilarious) is a lot to wrap our heads around.

Watch the trailer here then let us know what you think in the comments below:

The post Here’s the Star-Studded First Trailer for “Cats” appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Unfortunately, not every filmmaker’s dreams came true in 2019. Here are the year’s biggest flops and our guess as to why things went so wrong.

Cats

With a production budget of $100 million and an all-star cast, director Tom Hooper was hoping to hit the jackpot with his adaptation of the popular musical, Cats. Unfortunately, the movie took in shy of $11 million, making it one of the biggest flops of the year. 

Why It Flopped: Cats was doomed to flop the moment the first trailer started trending on social media for all the wrong reasons. The CGI human-cat-hybrids may have looked impressive, but they gave people the creeps. It’s no wonder hardly anyone went to see the movie.

Dark Phoenix

Sophie Turner’s debut in the X-Men universe did not pull in the viewers the producers had hoped. The film pulled in just $252 million at the box office, resulting in an estimated loss of $120 million. 

Why It Flopped: 2019 was the year of Marvel. After Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel, viewers had superhero fatigue. The summer release of the film was just poor timing. Coupled with the fact the film got bad reviews, there just wasn’t enough incentive for fans to go and see the movie. 

Charlie’s Angels

The Charlie’s Angels reboot pulled in just $57 million at the box office. The feminist reboot was meant to rewrite the story in a way that was empowering for women, but people didn’t bite.

Why It Flopped: Elizabeth Banks’ efforts at a feminist reboot were admirable, but the truth is, Charlie’s Angels is a story that just doesn’t work in 2019/20. The film was created as a male fantasy and when Banks tried to adapt it for a new generation, we discovered that the story itself just isn’t that interesting. And so it flopped.

The post These Were the Biggest Films Flops in 2019 appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Multiple outlets report that the big-screen adaptation of Cats directed by To Hooper is heading for a major box office loss. According to rival studio executives and based off a production cost of $90 million net, the film is bound to lose anywhere between $70-$100 million in theatrical losses. 

The film was off to a bad start even before it hit theaters with its use of CGI technology to turn its cast into felines. And so from the very beginning, the film never gained any traction in the box office, opening to a $6.5 million domestic debut. 

The film stars Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, and Idris Elba, who transformed into a tribe of furry felines. 

The post “Cats” Was a Major Box Office Flop appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Of course, the divisive nature of the trailer did not harm ticket sales. Our curiosity got the better of us and we all headed to the movie theater to see the bizarre star-studded classic reimagined with the latest CGI technology. The likes of Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, and Ezra Elba all suited up (or rather down) for the highly-anticipated Tom Hooper feature, but unfortunately, even Jennifer Hudson’s vocals couldn’t save this weird and whacky flick from disaster.

First, the cats are even more horrifying in the movie than they are in the trailer. It is impossible to get into the fantastical spirit of the movie because the cats just look too humanlike. These uncanny human-cat-hybrids prance around an apocalyptic-looking London, making us wonder if these “cats” are really mutants emerging from the rubble.

Similarly, the plot lives up to expectations. The “Cats” stage adaptation is based on a poem by T.S. Eliot. Subsequently, the tale is more atmospheric than action-packed and lacks a strong plot. This problem is not tackled in the film, which merely introduces different cats in the form of a song. Given that each cat looks like a surreal cat-human-hybrid, this is nothing to sing about.

That said, it’s hard to argue against the fact that the movie is visually spectacular. The setting is bright and exciting and if realism is what the costume designers were aiming for, they have certainly achieved that. 

The trouble is, we instinctively flinch at things that aren’t human that look too humanlike. The human-cat-hybrids sit somewhere in the uncanny valley, causing audiences to feel uncomfortable as our brains try to suss whether these weird creatures are threatening. And ultimately, this was Hooper’s biggest failure. Cats was thus doomed to fail when audiences recoiled in horror at the first trailer. 

2/5

The post Here’s What We Thought About “Cats” appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The feature adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s acclaimed musical has opened to the purr of 6.5 million, well below its 10-15 million projections. 

The film features a stellar cast that includes Taylor Swift, Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo, and James Corden, who donned feline features thanks to “digital fur technology.” As early as the first teaser dropped, the creepy visuals upended the internet and now that the film has hit theaters, it is still sending moviegoers into a total frenzy. 

“The [social media] blowback was massive and that did hurt it,” said Jeff Bock, a media analyst with Exhibitor Relations.

No doubt an odd creative choice for the musical-veteran studio, Universal, which credits include the Mamma Mia musical franchise and the Oscar-winning Les Miserables. 

The post “Cats” Bombs at the Box Office appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The pop icon who stars in Tom Hooper’s upcoming big-screen adaptation of the long-running musical from Andrew Lloyd Webber is here to calm fans and moviegoers — she loved the “weirdness” of the film.

Taylor Swift who is gracing the cover of British Vogue’s January, promoting the new Cats movie, said that she “really had an amazing time with Cats. I think I loved the weirdness of it. I loved how I felt I’d never get another opportunity to be like this in my life.”

It’s as if Swift missed the who digital fur technology ordeal which sent the entire internet into a complete frenzy! At lest her co-star Rebel Wilson acknowledged that “some people found [the trailer] a bit creepy ’cause we’re people but we look a bit like cats dancing around.”  

The film also stars Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, and James Corden. 

The post Taylor Swift Talks About the ”Weirdness” of “Cats” appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

In fact, many fans took to Twitter immediately after the trailer’s release to voice their opinions. The film, which features an all-star cast including Taylor Swift and Jennifer Hudson, began trending not because people were excited, but because they were horrified.

If you haven’t yet seen the trailer, you can watch it here before you read any further:

Among the YouTube comments, a user describes the teaser as “Nightmare fuel at its finest” while another clarifies: “It looks like someone skinned their faces and stretched it over some unnatural humanoid cat figure, making it look flat and downright weird.”

The feline effect was achieved using “digital fur technology.” This means that the stars retain their human movement and human faces, but have the furry body of a cat edited on in post-production. But why is the result giving people the creeps?

If you read our article on dolls in movies last week, you might recall our conversation on the uncanny valley. This is the category of non-human things that look semi-realistically human. Anabelle the horrifying doll, for example, does not look unrealistic enough to be categorically fake, but does not look human enough for us to know how to read it.

In the Cats trailer, these “digital fur” hybrids fall somewhere between our idea of a human and something of an entirely different entity. This uncertainty leaves us with the feeling that something is not quite right. We don’t know what characteristics to assign to the hybrids because they are not catlike enough to be cats but they’re not human enough to be humans. Our brains just don’t know what to do with that information.

Ultimately, the Cats trailer takes place in the uncanny valley and while this has inevitably caused many to shudder, the movie is not necessarily doomed to fail. The hybrid creatures have evoked a peculiar curiosity within us and if we can run with it, the movie may be a bizarrely satisfying experience. Check back in December for our full review.

The post Let’s Talk About the Polarizing “Cats” Trailer appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The trailer introduces the all-star cast in full-on cat costumes. Well, the fur was in fact digitally overlaid on their bodies in post-production by Hooper’s VFX team, but still.

The highly-anticipated feature stars the likes of Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, James Corden, Rebel Wilson, and Jeniffer Hudson. In other words, the cast list is major.

The trailer also shows a clip of Hudson singing the musical’s biggest number “Memory.” Her performance appears to be spectacular, as does the rest of the movie, only we can’t help but feel it’s going to split people down the middle.

Although the visuals already promise to be spectacular, there is something a little, shall we say, uncanny about the cats. Seeing our favorite stars dressed as felines with #digitalfurtechnology (seriously, check out the hashtag on Twitter because the feed is hilarious) is a lot to wrap our heads around.

Watch the trailer here then let us know what you think in the comments below:

The post Here’s the Star-Studded First Trailer for “Cats” appeared first on Entertainment For Us.