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New Cats movie trailer shows Taylor Swift, James Corden in top feline form

Andrew Lloyd Webber and T.S. Eliot meet T. Hooper and T. Swift in this feline fever dream out in December.

Katie Collins Senior European Correspondent
Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.
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Katie Collins
2 min read

Tom Hooper's big-screen adaptation of the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats is now only a month away from its Dec. 20 premiere. We got a further glimpse at the movie on Tuesday with a new trailer featuring some of the biggest names from the worlds of theater, dance, music and comedy.

In the film we'll see Taylor Swift, James Corden, Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Jason Derulo, Rebel Wilson, Ian McKellen and Jennifer Hudson as you probably never expected to see them -- transformed into feline form with the help of novel "digital fur" technology. Since the first trailer, it looks as if the appearance of the cats may have been updated. The faces of the actors seem more distinct. And is it just us, or do their ears seem a little larger?

At the center of this storytelling is the kitten Victoria, played by Royal Ballet principal ballerina Francesca Hayward. Hayward will sing an original song, Beautiful Ghosts, written especially for the movie by Swift and Lloyd Webber. The song had its own release last Friday and is a haunting counterpart to the iconic Memory, sung in the film by Hudson.

The trailer gives us few additional hints at what to expect from the story, other than it will center around the Jellicle ball, as it does in the original musical. We can see, though, that the richly detailed sets will combine with swishing tails and twitching ears to offer up a visually spectacular feast just in time for Christmas.

Cats opens Dec. 20 in the US and UK, and Dec. 26 in Australia.