James Corden, host of The Late Late Show, has said that even the rumored “butthole cut” of box office disaster Cats couldn’t have saved the film. The famed Andrew Lloyd Webber musical was adapted into a feature film for the first time last year, and despite its star-studded cast or Oscar-winning director, Cats was one of biggest box office flops of the decade.
Only $74 million of the film’s $95 million budget was recouped. Beyond the financial shortcomings of Cats, it was also critically savaged. Arguably, though, much of the attention given to Cats stems from the movie’s troubles with having cat buttholes on display. After VFX editors discovered that the CGI fur used on the film’s characters made it look as though the cats’ private parts were visible, much time was spent correcting the flaw. But even with such intense amounts of labor, some viewers have still managed to spot the odd cat butthole in the musical’s final cut. The somewhat hilarious mistake has only further made the film the butt of jokes, prompting rumors that an unedited butthole cut of the film is still in existence at Universal.