Taylor Swift Says in New Cats Film, the Fur Is Digital

The Jellicle ball is getting closer and closer! The Tom Hooper-helmed Cats film based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical will be released on December 20, 2019 and the stars are slowly revealing more about the highly anticipated movie. Grammy winner Taylor Swift, who is set to play Bombalurina, disclosed what fans should expect the star-studded cast to look like as the famous felines.

"Obviously, I loved the show, I loved the music, and one of the things that made Cats so special when it came out in the '80s was that it was presented in a way people hadn't seen before," Swift said in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. "[But] what about this is going to give people that same awe factor [that] we're seeing something completely original? I was like, 'Are we gonna be in the Lycra catsuits with fur glued to us? Like, what are we talking about here?'"

Hooper went on to give Swift a sample of the design that helped seal the deal. "They add digital fur to us," Swift said. "They're completely human performances. It's not animated. And it's not motion capture. It's somehow this new way that hasn't been done before. And they're giving us a tail that moves naturally, and ears and whiskers. It was one of the coolest things I've seen."

As previously announced, Swift will be joined in the cast by Jennifer Hudson, James Corden, Ian McKellen, Idris Elba, Rebel Wilson, Steven McRae, Francesca Hayward, Judi Dench and Laurie Davidson.

Based on T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, the musical tells the story of the Jellicle cats and each cat's individual quest to be selected as the lucky one who will ascend to "the Heaviside Layer." The Cats film will be choreographed by Wayne McGregor.