Eighteen Years Ago Today

... this animated film was released.







Cats Don't Dance



Directed by Mark Dindall for Turner Feature Animation (before it merged with Warner Bros.) Art directed by Brian McEntee, who did the same for Beauty and the Beast. Amy Pascal, who went on to a long reign at Sony, was one of the Turner execs.



Cats was the last film on which dancer Gene Kelly worked. (He served as a consultant.) It was also the first ... and last ... animated feature from Turner, which merged with Warner Bros. near the end of production. The movie under-performed at the box office, which wasn't unusual for Warner animated releases at the time. (Warners' Iron Giant, following soon after, also failed at the box office.)



The sour, semi-sick joke among industry animators in the late nineties? "Want to end AIDS? Let Warner Bros. distribute it."



(H/t -- Tom Sito)