The movie is the latest project for British filmmaker Tom Hooper, who brought novel-turned-musical “Les Miserables” to the big screen and won an Oscar for directing “The King’s Speech.”

“Cats,” composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and featuring the classic musical ballad “Memory,” opened in London in 1981 and originally was staged on Broadway from 1982 to 2000, the fourth-longest run in history.

Based on poems by T.S. Eliot, “Cats” tells of a feline tribe — in human form on stage — called the Jellicles who decide who among them will make a fateful ascent into a new life.

Cinema industry news site Variety said that Hudson, who won an Oscar for the 2006 film musical “Dreamgirls,” would play Grizabella, a formerly glamorous cat who longs for acceptance.

Variety and several other film sites said that “Cats” would also star, in roles to be determined, Swift, actor turned late-night comedian James Corden and veteran British actor Ian McKellen.

Film studio Universal did not respond to a request for comment. No release date has been announced for the film.

The 28-year-old Swift, who is touring through the end of November, is one of her generation’s highest-grossing singers, but she has also branched out into supporting roles on film.

She played a chaste girlfriend in the 2010 romantic comedy “Valentine’s Day” and, in a darker turn, appeared in the 2014 science-fiction film “The Giver.”

Swift is also known for her love of real-life cats. She frequently posts pictures on social media of her cats, Olivia and Meredith, who recently made a Hollywood debut in a scene in superhero film “Deadpool 2.”

The tweets, mainly from 2008 and 2011, joked about taboo topics such as rape and pedophilia.

Disney, which owns the franchise as the parent company of Marvel Studios, sent AFP a statement confirming the studio was parting ways with one of its biggest stars.

“The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him,” said Alan Horn, chairman of Walt Disney Studios.

Gunn has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump and has drawn the ire of conservative critics, who went back through his timeline and dug up the tweets.

Jack Posobiec of The Daily Caller and right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich are among those who unearthed the messages.

“Many people who have followed my career know when I started, I viewed myself as a provocateur, making movies and telling jokes that were outrageous and taboo,” Gunn wrote on Twitter after the offensive tweets resurfaced late Thursday.

“As I have discussed publicly many times, as I’ve developed as a person, so has my work and my humor.”

Gunn, who has deleted his account, described himself as a “very, very different” person than when he wrote the tweets, now focusing on love rather than anger.

“My days saying something just because it’s shocking and trying to get a reaction are over,” he added.

Gunn directed both “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, and was planning to head to San Diego’s huge annual Comic-Con fan convention this week with a secret film project that he had teased on Instagram.

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” is due out in 2020.

The first half of 2018 has been a period of significant change for iflix as the service evolves away from the traditional Western SVOD model and introduces new unique culturally rich, engaging localised programming and features, targeting both mass market users and younger digital-savvy demographic groups, iflix said in a press statement.

The result has been unprecedented growth in customer engagement, with content consumption doubling in the last 5 months for an overall 22.84 billion minutes (43,500 years) streamed since launch, the statement added.

iflix Co-Founder and Group CEO, Mark Britt said, “2018 is already a transformational year for iflix. We continue to be passionately obsessed with what emerging markets customers need and want. The huge growth we’ve seen across the business is a testament to that commitment. We have one goal and that is to make iflix ubiquitous across emerging markets. To achieve this, we will continue to learn and innovate to build global culture and find new audiences for extraordinary world class content.”

“We owe a huge thank you to our customers and partners for sharing their time, feedback and patience, allowing us to continually learn and get better every day at delivering a service created just for them,” Britt added.

Now available to over one billion consumers throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa, iflix has established itself as the clear market leader in video streaming. Offering consumers a vast library of top Hollywood, regional, and local TV shows and movies, including many first run exclusives and award-winning programs, each subscription allows users to access the service on up to five devices, including phones, laptops, tablets, and television sets, for viewing wherever, whenever.

This year’s festival aimed to connect with international members of the film industry and give them an opportunity to have a hands-on experience of filming in Thailand with a Thai crew.

“We received great feedback from film students around the world, with 277 teams applying for the short film competition and 24 teams from England, Bulgaria, Portugal, Brazil, India, the Philippines and Singapore making it through to the final round. They were assigned to shoot their short films in 8 tourism locations around the country under the concept ‘Thai Style’ and give their own interpretation to nature, culture and the local identity. Fifteen Thai student teams, selected from 36 teams, were assigned to shoot under the concept “Sufficiency Economy” in any province in Thailand,” Anan Wongbenjarat, the department’s director general, explained.

“To promote the potential of Thailand and attract international production through the visions of new generation is a very effective strategy. Many foreign productions, including movies, TV programmes, music videos and documentaries, have been filmed in Thailand, which reflects our potential as a film destination with skilled crews and facilities. Therefore, Thailand International Film Destination Festival is very important to promote and present our success to the world as the most popular filming location in Asia,” he added.

Many distinguished international and Thai actors and directors also joined the award ceremony including Wes Chatham from “The Hunger Games”, Justin Diemen, producer of “Before the Fall” and Dimitri Logothetis, director and screenwriter of “Kickboxer 1” and Kickboxer2” plus Thai actors Vithaya Parnsringam and Pu Sahajak.

“Thailand on Screen”, which saw seven foreign movies shot in Thailand screened at Paragon Cineplex earlier this month, was also well received. The films – “Kickboxer: Vengeance”, “Largo Winch II”, “Lupin the 3rd”, “The 101-Year-Old Man Who Skipped Out on the Bill and Disappeared”, “Kickboxer: Retaliation”, “Will You Be There?” and “All I See Is You” – have attracted tourists to visit the film locations.

The prompt action follows the high demand from Hollywood production companies who want to make a movie about the marathon cave rescue operation of the Mu Pa (Wild Boars) Academy football club and its coach who were trapped in flooded Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai.

“Five international film production companies have proposed to the Commerce and Foreign ministries that they make a movie and a documentary about the rescue operation,” Vira said at Government House.

Chaired by Wissanu Krua-gnam, the National Film Broad agreed to set up a special film board committee to oversee the filming. The committee will include officials from the Culture, Commerce and Tourism and Sport ministries.

“The committees will be concerned about the accuracy of the story, the rights of the [team], the rescuers and other related agencies, as well as the image of Thailand. They will also be concerned about the impact of film production to the film locations,” Vira said.

“We are pleased to support both Thai and international film productions to make a movie and documentary on “Mu Pa” if they follow Thai laws,” Vira said.

The ministry did not reveal the name of the recent production companies that expressed interest. However, two American producers have been scouting Tham Laung for their potential movie – before the last five members of the team were rescued on July 10.

Michael Scott, managing partner of Pure Flix films and co-producer Adam Smith have been conducting preliminary interviews around the cave site.

The Discovery Channel produced an hour-long documentary, titled “Operation Thai Rescue”, that will be aired in Thailand on July 23 at 8.55pm.

A similar project – “The 33” directed by Patricia Riggen – told the story of the 2010 mining disaster in Chile that trapped 33 miners for two months. Although it had a cast of Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin and Juliette Binoche, the $26 million (Bt870 million) budget film made only $24.9 million at the box office worldwide.

Shifting away from Colombia, where Narcos spent three seasons, “Narcos: Mexico” will explore the origins of the modern drug war by going back to its roots, beginning at a time when the Mexican trafficking world was a loose and disorganised confederation of independent growers and dealers.

Witness the rise of the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1980s as Felix Gallardo takes the helm, unifying traffickers in order to build an empire. When DEA agent Kiki Camarena moves his wife and young son from California to Guadalajara to take on a new post, he quickly learns that his assignment will be more challenging than he ever could have imagined. As Camarena garners intelligence on Gallardo and becomes more entangled in his mission, a tragic chain of events unfold, affecting the drug trade and the war against it for years to come.

Michael Pena will play Kiki Camarena, a family man and an undercover DEA agent who garners valuable intel through a series of informants around Gallardo and his newly minted Guadalajara cartel, but quickly finds himself in way over his head as he realises he had completely underestimated the sophistication of Gallardo’s system.

Diego Luna will play Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo (“Felix”), the leader of the Guadalajara cartel, the biggest narco in the history of Mexico and the founder of the modern Mexican drug trade. Quiet but bold, inscrutable but sharp-minded, to all appearances he is a benevolent leader, loyal to his friends, associates, and employees…but his ambition comes before all else.

Additional casting for the series includes Aaron Staton (“Mad Men”) as Butch Sears and Alejandro Edda (“Fear the Walking Dead”) as Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman.

“Narcos: Mexico” will premiere globally on Netflix later this year.

The eight-episode third season begins production in Kansas City on July 16, with co-hosts Antoni Porowski (Food & Wine), Bobby Berk (Interior Design), Karamo Brown (Culture), Jonathan Van Ness (Grooming) and Tan France (Fashion). It will stream in 2019.

The “make-better” series recently received four Emmy Award nominations for its inaugural return season with recognition in the Structured Reality Program, Casting, Picture Editing and Cinematography categories.

It’s been 15 years since “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” revolutionized reality television. The series turned to Netflix in 2018 going global and introducing audiences around the world to a modern aesthetic, diverse perspectives and a brand new Fab Five. Netflix’s new Fab Five are forging relationships with men and women from a wide array of backgrounds and beliefs often contrary to their own, touching on everything from self-love and faith, to immigration and how to make the perfect homemade poke bowls and more.

The animated fantasy comedy, whose voice cast includes Adam Sandler and Selena Gomez, follows Count Dracula and his family as they get away from their hotel for their own vacation.

It swatted away last week’s number one, “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” in at second with takings of $28.8 million over the three-day weekend, according to industry tracker Exhibitor Relations.

The 20th release in Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe sees ex-con Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) languishing under house arrest in San Francisco after being caught, as his shrinkable superhero alter-ego, fighting some of the other Avengers in “Captain America: Civil War” (2016).

Struggling to balance home life and Ant-Man duties, he’s confronted by old flame Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), alias the Wasp, with an urgent new mission.

Third place went to Universal’s new release “Skyscraper,” with earnings of $25.5 million.

Packed with action, it sees Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson star as an ex-FBI agent who has to rescue his family from the newly built tallest skyscraper in the world, after terrorists set it ablaze.

In at fourth was “Incredibles 2,” dropping one place with takings of $16.2 million. After earning $28.4 million last week, it pushed past Pixar stablemate “Finding Dory” (2016) as the top-grossing animated film of all time.

Ranking fifth was Universal’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” taking $15.5 million.

The movie, which has raked in more than $1 billion globally, sees Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard struggle to contain dinosaurs rescued from a tropical Pacific island and sheltered temporarily at a California mansion.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

“The First Purge” ($9.1 million)

“Sorry To Bother You” ($4.3 million)

“Sicario: Day of the Soldado” ($3.9 million)

“Uncle Drew” ($3.2 million)

“Ocean’s 8” ($2.9 million)

“Mission: Impossible – Fallout” is the sixth in the action spy series and stars Cruise as agent Ethan Hunt along with Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Henry Cavill and Alec Baldwin.

The film, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, follows Hunt and his team as they race against time to recover stolen plutonium after a mission goes wrong.

Cruise, 56, known for performing many of his own stunts, jumped from the cargo door of a plane at 7,500 metres (25,000 feet) for one scene and broke an ankle trying to jump between two buildings during filming in London.

All three episodes will be available at the same time to more than 125 million Netflix members in 190 countries, including India.

“Ghoul”, produced in partnership with Phantom Films, Ivanhoe and Blumhouse, stars Radhika Apte and Manav Kaul and marks Netflix’s first venture into the horror genre in India.

“‘Ghoul’ is a thrilling horror series, both frightening and insightful. Its high production value, a chilling performance from Radhika Apte, and quality writing are sure to scare Indian and global audiences alike,” says Simran Sethi, director of International Originals.

“It has been a great experience working closely with Netflix and our partners at Phantom and Ivanhoe to produce “Ghoul”. This is Blumhouse’s first foray into the horror genre in India and we’re excited to share this project with horror enthusiasts around the world,” says Jason Blum from Blumhouse,

Vikramaditya Motwane, Phantom Films, adds that ““Ghoul” is a first in class, edge-of-your-seat horror series and we are incredibly proud of it. This is our second collaboration with Netflix (after ‘Sacred Games’) and yet another strong example of commitment towards high quality content. We are extremely proud of ‘Ghoul’ and cannot wait for audiences around the world to experience an elevated horror narrative from India.”

Kilian Kerwin, Ivanhoe Pictures, adds: “‘Ghoul’ is a collaborative effort to tell a story that is rooted in India, in a manner that will appeal to audiences around the world. Our goal is to create incredible entertainment that speaks to audiences from diverse cultures, and we’re very proud of this series, which is sure to be a must-watch in the horror genre globally.”

From the makers of “Insidious”, “Get Out” and “Udta Punjab” – “Ghoul” is a chilling series about a prisoner who arrives at a remote military interrogation centre and turns the tables on his interrogators, exposing their most shameful secrets.

Based on Arabic folklore, “Ghoul” is set at a covert detention centre at which military officials question and often torture suspected terrorists. Nida (Rathika Apte), a newly minted interrogator who turned in her own father as an anti-government activist, arrives at the centre to discover that some of these terrorists are not of this world, and she must fight for not just the truth behind the military’s hyper-nationalist goals, but for her survival in the face of demons, both human and not.