Let the Memory Live Again! Will Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats Prowl Onto the Big Screen?

Those Jellicle Cats may be getting another life! It looks like Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats might make like Cameron Mackintosh's Les Miserables and get the silver screen treatment. According to the U.K.'s Daily Mail, executives at Universal Studios Entertainment are considering adapting the Tony-winning tuner into a memorable movie musical.

"Universal has now got Cats out of the drawer in which they locked it years ago when they bought the rights and suddenly they’re talking about a film," Lloyd Webber told the Mail. "You never know in life. We never knew whether the public was going to love Cats until the moment we saw a cat go on stage. It could have been the most terrible moment of bathos in musical theatre. I remember sitting backstage waiting for the response. Somehow we got away with it."

Lloyd Webber also referenced how Susan Boyle's 2009 performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" on Britain's Got Talent helped reignite people's passion for Les Miz. "Three or four years ago it was closing around the world and there was no film likely. Susan Boyle comes along and does that 'I Dreamed a Dream' and the show has now become the biggest musical around the world," he said. "She could have just as easily have gone on and done 'Memory.'"

Based on T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, the well-loved musical tells the story of the Jellicle Cats and each cat's individual quest to be selected as the lucky one that will ascend to the "heavyside layer." Cats ran for 21 years in London and 18 years on Broadway, where it won seven Tony Awards including Best Musical.