An anonymous visual effects artist has claimed the VFX team spent more time creating the trailer for Cats than the movie itself.
Tom Hooper's movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, starring Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, and Rebel Wilson, was savaged by critics, who slated the computer-generated effects, plot, and tone. The film was a box office flop upon its release in December.
But an anonymous source who worked in the Cats visual effects (VFX) department has now spoken out and given a candid account of the troubles the team experienced during production to The Daily Beast.
In the report, the source claimed the team spent six months making the film's two-minute trailer, leaving them around four months to complete the entire film.
"It was pure, almost slavery for us, how much work we put into it with no time, and everything was difficult," they said. "We were so rushed on the project that we'd have no time for anything. So when people say, 'Oh, the effects were not good,' or 'The animation's not good,' or anything, that's not our fault. We have no time. Six months to do a two-minute trailer and four months to do a film of an hour and a half. My math is pretty good... You could figure that doesn't make any sense."
The source allegedly worked 90-hour weeks for months to get the film complete, while others slept in the office to work on the projects for days. The insider was also critical of Hooper, calling him "horrible" and alleging he delayed the team by having them fully render works in progress or by asking to see videos of actual cats performing the same actions as their fictional ones.
The source also confirmed the rumour about the "butthole cut", revealing that the movie was halfway complete when they noticed the feline characters had been given buttholes - so one VFX artist was hired to digitally remove them.
"When we were looking at the playbacks, we were like, 'What the hell? You guys see that?!... There's a f**king butthole in there'... There was nobody that said, 'We want buttholes.' It was one of those things that just happened and slipped through," they added.
Representatives for Hooper and Universal have not yet responded to the comments.
