"Cats" the movie will open on December 20, 2019.
Cats is one of the longest-running musicals and now the silver screen. The combination of felines and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s memorable musical score created a purr-fect treat on Broadway and continuing traveling performances around the world.
Based on T.S. Eliot’s 1939 book of poems, Old Possum's Books of Practical Cats, the story centers on a tribe of cats called the Jellicles who stage an annual event to decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new Jellicle life.
When the USPS asked people to vote for Arts and Entertainment events of the 1980's worthy of putting on a stamp, Cats won with close to 170,000 votes, high enough to qualify it for the commemorative "Celebrate the Century" series.
The Cats stamp was officially released on Jan. 12, 2000, in a special event at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in New York City, where the play ran from October 7, 1982, to September 10, 2010, with 7,397 performances.
The most recent Cats stamps commemorate Webber’s 70th birthday in 2018.
Cats the movie is directed by Tom Hooper and stars an ensemble cast including James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift and Rebel Wilson.
Special thanks to Marci Jarvis, the Editor of Cat Mews, which is the official publication of the Cats on Stamps Study Unit.