It really grinds my gears that they took a movie-length two act play and padded it out to chop it up into two movies. And they'll be rewarded for it. Together, they'll gross over $1.5 billion, maybe over 2.
I really do. I think it will be more Lion King remake than Cats adaptation. But I'm ready to admit that I was wrong if people don't line up in droves for it. I think the first will do much better than the second, because a ton of people will say "the ending sucked. It just stopped without any resolution. And there wasn't even half the songs from Wizard of Oz."
Yeah the book is much darker and more in depth. It gets into topics around class divides and suicide. Which is why when I went to see the play it was so jarring to me.