Theaters are receiving a new version of Cats with “some improved visual effects,” just days after it premiered to dismal reviews. The update to the CGI-heavy movie was available to download on Sunday night, with hard drives otherwise ready to ship by Tuesday, according to a memo reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter. The change was requested by the film’s director Tom Hooper (Les Misérables, The King’s Speech), according to THR.
Hooper admitted to finishing the film just a day before its Friday premiere after working on it for “36 hours in a row.” The last-minute tweaks left room for mistakes, apparently, like Judy Dench’s human hand slipping through unnoticed.
This isn’t a joke: CATS was rushed into theaters before being finished so a new version is being sent to theaters with updated effects. How do you know if you have the old version? Look for Judi Dench’s human hand, wedding ring and all. pic.twitter.com/VDUOevePU9
The exact improvements haven’t been detailed. Hooper’s been updating the visuals ever since the first trailer startled audiences with “digital fur technology” that transformed the likes of Idris Elba, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, and Jennifer Hudson into bipedal cats.
Changes to films already in theaters are extremely rare, but they do happen. Vanity Fair lists a few examples, including The Shining which Stanley Kubrick reportedly re-cut to trim the ending shortly after it premiered. However, that was pre-digital, making it a much more costly affair to swap out the old reels on a national or international scale. Let’s hope the advent of digital distribution doesn’t usher in an era of nearly-complete film releases akin to nearly-complete software releases like iOS 13.
My kids are actually pretty much my whole life now. And you know what—if you told me thirty years ago that I would be this boring, stay-at-home, you know, house dad, and Bill Cosby would be in jail? Even I would have taken that bet. Who is America’s dad now?
That’s extremely mild, as jokes about Bill Cosby go, but apparently it wasn’t mild enough for Andrew Wyatt, who posted a statement on Cosby’s official Instagram page accusing Murphy of being a “Hollywood Slave.” Wyatt also observed that “Stepin Fetchit plus cooning equals the destruction of Black Men in Hollywood,” although it’s not clear exactly which part of Murphy’s observation about the vagaries of fortune and Cosby’s downfall counts as “Stepin Fetchit plus cooning.” Here’s the post:
Wyatt’s comments are far from the first time Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby have been mad at each other. In his 1987 standup special Raw, Murphy recounted a story about Cosby calling him to chastise him for cursing in his act:
In 2007, Cosby denied Murphy’s account of their conversation, saying that he’d actually called Murphy to discourage him from bragging about how much money he was making:
Eddie is a liar. And Malcolm-Jamal Warner was in that room and heard me talk to Eddie on the telephone. And Malcolm knows that is not what I said to him. … this is a very nasty, nasty liar. Period.
The first public accusations against Cosby were in January of 2005, although they quickly faded from public consciousness until Tom Scocca assembled them all in one place at Gawker in February of 2014. Hannibal Burress’ Cosby routine was that October, and New York Magazine’s celebrated cover story about Cosby’s accusers wasn’t until the summer of 2015. So when Murphy was asked to play Cosby on the Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special in February of 2015, the Cosby story was still unfolding. Murphy declined to revive his impersonation—Kenan Thompson played Cosby that night—a decision he explained to the Washington Post that October, saying that “the sketch that Norm [Macdonald] wrote was hysterical,” but:
It’s horrible. There’s nothing funny about it. If you get up there and crack jokes about him, you’re just hurting people. You’re hurting him. You’re hurting his accusers. I was like, “Hey, I’m coming back to SNL for the anniversary, I’m not turning my moment on the show into this other thing.”
Shortly after the special aired, Cosby publicly thanked Murphy for not playing him, telling NBC News, “I am very appreciative of Eddie and I applaud his actions.” Presumably Cosby wasn’t applauding when Murphy received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor about a week after his interview with the Washington Post. In his first public stand-up set in 28 years, Murphy revived his Cosby impression, asking if the Kennedy Center had asked Cosby, a prior recipient, to return his award. (In 2018, Cosby’s award was rescinded.) Here’s Murphy’s acceptance speech:
Whatever career advice Cosby actually gave Murphy back in the 1980s, he didn’t offer any feedback on Murphy’s Mark Twain Award speech at the time. Now we finally know how he feels about it. Thanks for keeping us up-to-date, Bill Cosby spokesperson Andrew Wyatt!
Here are Andrew Wyatt’s comments about Eddie Murphy’s Saturday Night Live appearance.
Bill Cosby’s publicist, Andrew Wyatt, responds to Eddie Murphy’s SNL Monologue: “Mr. Cosby became the first Black to win an Emmy for his role in I Spy and Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment industry, so that blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappell [sic], Kevin Hart and et al., could have an opportunity to showcase their talents for many generations to come. It is sad that Mr. Murphy would take this glorious moment of returning to SNL and make disparaging remarks against Mr. Cosby. One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that he could make his own decision; but he decided to sell himself back to being a Hollywood Slave. Stepin Fetchit plus cooning equals the destruction of Black Men in Hollywood. Remember, Mr. Murphy, that Bill Cosby became legendary because he used comedy to humanize all races, religions, and genders; but your attacking Mr. Cosby helps you embark on just becoming click bait. Hopefully, you will be amenable to having a meeting of the minds conversation, in order to discuss how we can use our collective platforms to enhance Black people rather than bringing all of us down together.” #NotFunnySNL #SNL #FarFromFinished #FreeBillCosby #Bill Cosby
Eddie Murphy made a crack on 'SNL' at Bill Cosby's expense -- and the incarcerated comedian didn't appreciate it one bit ... with his rep calling Ed a "Slave" to Tinseltown.
Cosby's rep, Andrew Wyatt, posted a scathing response Sunday to Eddie's joke -- and it's pretty brutal. Wyatt, speaking on behalf of Bill, writes ... "Mr. Cosby became the first Black to win an Emmy for his role in I Spy and Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappell, Kevin Hart and et al., could have an opportunity to showcase their talents for many generations to come."
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He went on ... "It is sad that Mr. Murphy would take this glorious moment of returning to SNL and make disparaging remarks against Mr. Cosby," going on to add, "One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that he could make his own decisions; but he decided to sell himself back to being a Hollywood Slave."
Wyatt continues by comparing Eddie to vaudevillian actor Stepin Fetchit, and said "cooning" equals the destruction of black men in Hollywood. Then ... he offered a truce of sorts.
The guy invites Eddie to meet with Bill in hopes of "having a meeting of the minds" to help the black community instead of tearing it down -- something BC apparently thinks Eddie is doing by taking shots at him on national television.
ICYMI, Eddie joked if you would've told him 30 years ago he'd be this stay-at-home dad like he is now with so many kids (10 of 'em) while the Cos himself was in jail ... he says would've taken that bet. He then imitated Cosby's voice by calling himself "America's Dad."
Cosby was found guilty of aggravated indecent assault in 2018, and is currently serving a 3 to 10 year prison sentence.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s opening weekend will land south of both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, according to domestic box office estimates Disney sent out this morning.
The Rise of Skywalker’s first weekend pulled in $175.5 million in North America, $90 million of that from the Thursday night early-bird showings and then Friday’s full premiere. Though it’s an estimated total, $175 million is still short of the top 10 among domestic opening weekends all time, behind 2016’s Captain America: Civil War.
It’s also not in the same tax bracket as Skywalker’s trilogy predecessors — The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi both took more than $200 million in their debut weekends, good for third and fourth in that (domestic) category, all time. At this point, the opening weekend top 10 is largely an intramural competition, with Disney films accounting for 13 of the top 14, and six of those in the last two years.
But $175.5 million still makes The Rise of Skywalker the third-highest grossing Star Wars movie after its first weekend in the United States, comfortably in front of Revenge of the Sith, which earned $108.4 million from its 2005 debut.
Internationally, The Rise of Skywalker added $198 million to its gross (for $373.5 million worldwide), helped by $26.8 million and $12.1 million from same-day premieres in the United Kingdom and China, respectively. By comparison, The Force Awakens scored almost $500 million ($494 million to be precise) in its first weekend worldwide, while The Last Jeditook in $437.5 million.Notably, China waited about a month after both movies’ launch date before they premiered in that country.
Disney started out the weekend by tamping down industry-watchers’ expectations, offering a $160 million estimate for The Rise of Skywalker’s domestic box office even as other third parties projected $200 million or more.
The comparatively depressed box office haul could reflect any number of audience trends, ranging from fatigue with the 42-year-old franchise; last year’s underwhelming Solo: A Star Wars Story ($148 million opening weekend worldwide, $84.4 million U.S.) ; a critically tepid, if not thumbs-down, response to director J.J. Abrams’ vision for the franchise; or the querulous chatter of a divided fan base on social media.
Rotten Tomatoes currently gives The Rise of Skywalker a 54% rating among critics (meaning percent of positive reviews), which is low enough to get the green splat icon. Moviegoers, however, give it an 86% (meaning ticket buyers who gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars, or more). Metacritic’s aggregation of 59 scored reviews also lands The Rise of Skywalker at a 54; Metacritic readers rate it a 50, evenly dividing more than 1,000 user reviews between positive and negative.
“There’s certainly a palpable sense throughout The Rise of Skywalker that the creators are trying to revisit and pay off every satisfying battle and memorable moment from Skywalker Saga history all at once,” says our spoiler-free review. However, “the film feels clumsy, hurried, and above all, like an admission of creative defeat.”
It took 35 years, but Eddie Murphy came back to host “Saturday Night Live.”
The last time Murphy hosted the show, it was Dec. 15, 1984, just a few months after this one-time wunderkind (who joined “S.N.L.” when he was 19 years old) quit the program to focus on his flourishing film career. In the sketches that aired that night, he revisited several of his beloved characters, including Buckwheat, Gumby and Mr. Robinson.
Tonight, in an episode that also featured the musical guest Lizzo, Murphy returned to those characters once again. But first, in an opening monologue, he updated the audience on the last several years of his life and received tributes from a few surprise guests.
Taking the stage of NBC’s Studio 8H, Murphy told “S.N.L.” viewers: “This is the last episode of 2019. But if you’re black, this is the first episode since I left back in 1984.”
He then showed a photograph of himself when he was still an “S.N.L.” cast member. “Yeah, I look at least five years younger there,” Murphy said. “You know what they always say: Money don’t crack.”
Among the ways that his life has changed since then, Murphy said, is that “I have 10 kids now — 11 if you count Kevin Hart.” He added, “If you had told me 30 years ago that I would be this boring stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail, even I would have took that bet.” Slipping into his Cosby impersonation, Murphy said, “Who is America’s Dad now?”
Tracy Morgan, a fellow “S.N.L.” alum, joined Murphy onstage and offered him praise. “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here,” Morgan told him. “Like, literally. I was conceived on the ‘Delirious’ tour bus.”
Chris Rock, who was also an “S.N.L.” cast member before becoming a stand-up superstar, said that the show’s creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels had compared him to Murphy when he joined the show.
“When I got hired, Lorne told me, ‘You’re going to be the next Eddie Murphy,” Rock said. “And then a year later he said, ‘No, you’re not.’”
Dave Chappelle, another titan of stand-up, told Murphy he had been an inspiration. “I followed your blueprint for my entire career,” Chappelle said. “I became the biggest star on television and then I quit.”
Looking over the assembled group, Chappelle said, “Right now you’re looking at half of Netflix’s budget, right here onstage.”
Morgan said: “Not me. I made all my millions on the road.”
Murphy asked, “You mean touring?”
Morgan replied, “No, I got hit by a truck.”
Mr. Robinson Sketch of the Week
In the first of several segments in which Murphy reprised his former “S.N.L.” characters, he donned the sweater and sneakers of Mr. Robinson, his Mr. Rogers parody, who told viewers that his neighborhood had changed considerably since the last time they saw him.
As Murphy sang in his opening song:
I was gone for a bit, but now I’m all right. My neighbors was all black, but now they white. The check cashing place turned into a bank. Elevator works and the stairs they don’t stink. The white people came and changed everything, But I am still your neighbor.
He also taught his audience about the word “gentrification”: “It’s like a magic trick,” Murphy said. “White people pay a lot of money and then poof, all the black people are gone.”
Buckwheat Sketch of the Week
What started out looking like a straightforward lampoon of Fox’s reality competition series “The Masked Singer” took a turn when Chris Redd (playing the show’s host, Nick Cannon) introduced a new contestant, dressed in a giant corn-on-the-cob costume, who began crooning “Can’t Help Falling in Love” in an almost unintelligible patois.
It was, of course, Murphy, playing his version of Buckwheat, the old “Our Gang” character, who went onto sing other popular tunes including “Dine, Teal, Dawibba,” “I Chot Da Chariff” and “Tinga Nadies.”
Melissa Villaseñor, playing the panelist Nicole Scherzinger, told Murphy, “We’ve missed you these past 30 years.” He told her not to worry, saying, “Wherever I am, I’m doing o-tay.”
Democratic Debate Sketch of the Week
You know how these celebrity-laden, impression-heavy segments go, so we’ll give you a quick rundown of who played whom and what their best lines were:
Heidi Gardner as the moderator Judy Woodruff: “Just like ‘The Bachelor,’ the further we go, the less diverse it gets.”
Kate McKinnon as Elizabeth Warren: “I’m here and I am in my element. PBS is my safe word. Last debate, I gave you policy T.M.I., and now I am ready to walk it back.”
Colin Jost as Pete Buttigieg: “I’m the only person on this stage who isn’t a millionaire or billionaire. I live on my mayor’s salary plus a $20 a week allowance from my parents, and that’s only if I do my chores.”
Larry David as Bernie Sanders: “Look at me. Are you really surprised that my main concern is the temperature?” He added: “Let me tell you, no matter how hot the earth gets I will not wear shorts. I swim in corduroy.”
Jason Sudeikis as Joe Biden: “Notice anything different about me? Grandpa Joe got the glow up. I was ‘Irishman’-ed. Younger? Yup. Taller? Sure. Better? Ehhh.”
Fred Armisen as Michael Bloomberg, explaining his uninvited appearance at the debate: “For $30 million, PBS is now owned by viewers like me.”
Yes, there was also an appearance by Alec Baldwin as President Trump (who said he was there “so you people will actually watch this little freak show”), and McKinnon changed costumes mid-sketch to reappear as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose Christmas gift to Trump was two articles of impeachment.
Weekend Update Jokes of the Week
Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors, Colin Jost and Michael Che, made a Christmas joke swap and riffed on the latest impeachment news.
Jost:
On Wednesday, the House voted to impeach President Trump. But Nancy Pelosi refuses to send the articles to the Senate until they guarantee a fair trial. So now we’re all in this weird limbo where no one knows exactly what’s going on, there’s this cast of wild characters making fools of themselves, and everyone is thinking, “Please, God, just let this end.” So basically it’s “Cats.”
Che:
In a letter to Nancy Pelosi, Trump claimed that he has been treated worse than those accused in the Salem witch trials. You know where they set women on fire for, like, wearing pants. Well, according to Donald Trump, impeachment is, like, literally worse than that. I’m a little disappointed in Donald Trump. I knew he would snap but I thought it would be fun like Tupac in ’96. This is more sad like Britney in ’07.
Gumby Sketch of the Week
In another welcome head-fake, Jost began to set up a joke about Mitch McConnell, only to be interrupted by Murphy, playing his dyspeptic version of Gumby, the venerable clay-animated character.
Murphy joined Jost and Che at the Weekend Update desk, mostly to bellow out his famous catchphrase, “I’m Gumby, damn it,” and to roast the two anchors.
“I’ve passed kidney stones with more personality than the two of you,” Murphy told them. “Face it, kid, the two of you together couldn’t Velcro my sneakers.” (Meanwhile, if you were hoping to see Murphy’s old character Velvet Jones, he turned up in a “Black Jeopardy” sketch later in the show.)
When Eddie Murphy stepped back into Studio 8H for the first time in three-and-a-half decades, he brought with him some classic characters from Mister Robinson to Velvet Jones.
Murphy’s first sketch in the Dec. 21 episode of “Saturday Night Live” was “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood.” After so many years away, he was still living in his same apartment in a quickly gentrifying neighborhood, thanks to squatter’s rights.
“I was gone for a bit, but now I’m all right. My neighbors were all black, but now they’re white. The check cashing place turned into a bank; elevator works and the stairs stink. The white people came and changed everything, but I am still your neighbor,” he sang.
He commented on other things that have changed in the time he has been away from the audience, such as 23 And Me — “because of them, 23 people said their father is me.”
Later in the episode Murphy brought back Buckwheat, who was a surprise contestants on “The Masked Singer.” Dressed in a giant corn on the cob costume, his distinctive voice was obvious, even when crooning “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You.”
Beck Bennett as Robin Thicke guessed the celebrity under the mask correctly, and the other judges followed suit. Buckwheat was unmasked, to which Kate McKinnon’s Jenny McCarthy said she was freaking out because he was her idol.
Once he was unmasked, he had some more to sing, including lines from “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours,” “Feliz Navidad” and “Single Ladies.” The show put the lyrics on the screen, karaoke-style, but based on what it sounded like he was singing, not the actual lyrics are.
Bowen Yang portrayed show judge Ken Jeong, who said that as a doctor he was comfortable diagnosing Buckwheat as “100% juicy.”
Murphy’s Buckwheat said he was going to go away again but he didn’t want anyone to worry about him. Wherever he is, he said, he’s “doing o-tay.”
His Gumby made an appearance during “Weekend Update,” storming out on stage to angrily ask co-anchors and co-head writers Colin Jost and Michael Che how they were going to put on the show without him. “They know who the hell I am, I’m Gumby!” he said as he sat down.
“I should have been in every damn sketch from the top. I’m the one that made that Eddie Murphy a start. He was just a regular coon boy until I saw him,” he said.
Che did say they assumed no one would know who Gumby was.
“This is the thanks I get for saving this show from the gutter? Shame on you, Lorne Michaels. Shame on you, NBC,” Murphy’s Gumby said.
Both Jost and Che tried to get him to calm down, which drew more anger, resulting in Murphy’s Gumby calling Jost “trailer boy” and Che a “black bastard.”
“You know why you don’t come out from behind this desk? Because your jokes don’t have legs, you schmucks,” he said. “I passed kidney stones with more personality than the two of you.”
Because he’s green and children love him, Murphy’s Gumby said he was a Christmas character and said an opportunity was wasted by not using him sooner in the show. “The people want to see me!” he declared.
And finally, during a “Black Jeopardy!” sketch, Velvet Jones, introduced as “the founder of the Velvet Jones Institute of Technology, which he said meant he “showed ladies how to start their own business making up to $1500 dollars a week with my No. 1 bestseller, ‘I Want To Be A Ho,'” was one of the contestants.
Murphy’s Jones kept pimping (pun intended) his new books, almost all of which had “ho” in the title, which had the show’s host (played by Kenan Thompson) noting that “folks on the internet are going to be mad.” He was even prompted to ask if Jones had heard of #MeToo.
“Of course. You like hoes? Me, too,” he replied.
But things took a more modern turn when he was given a clue that asked what you shouldn’t do if your niece showed up to a holiday in a crop top.
“What you not going to do is judge this woman. It’s 2019, and she has every right to be sexy and to show off her beauty. She is independent, and she can make her own money. She doesn’t have to have sex with anyone,” he said. “It’s all in my new book entitled ‘How to Be an Instagram Ho’ and make $1500 a week from the comfort of your own bedroom being a strong, independent Instagram ho.”
“Saturday Night Live” airs live coast-to-coast Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET / 8:30 p.m. PT on NBC.
