Why did Ariana's Wicked smash while Taylor's Cats flop?

[Goaty]

"Taylor's Cats"? Now hold on there 

[naval23]

Ariana can emote 

[javieraloud]

TABS 

[BrokenMachine]

One had good singers and actors 

[Bimbo]

Because Cats is a mediocre play and Taylor a mediocre actress 

[Miley Cyrus]

taylor couldn't release multiple versions of cats to artificially prop it up on the charts  

Edited 2 hours ago by Miley Cyrus

[Taylena]

I'm not sure why Taylor's acting skills are being brought up here. Even if she were the best actress in the world, I don't see how she could save a terrible movie with her five minutes of screen time.

[alexrex]

Because Ariana is a vocalist 

[WildHeart]

2 hours ago, Spicy Pisces said:

Swifties having this rule to never talk about Cats is the answer to your question

 

Why would we talk about a movie from 2019 when she had a recent smash with The Eras Movie. Other fads with their latest bombs can't relate 

Edited 54 minutes ago by WildHeart

[LoudCitySong]

Gonna ignore this topic's obvious false equivocation of Ari and Taylor's involvement in the respective films to say:

1. Better Source Material: Cats is a series of vignettes that barely works as a stage play. Outside of "Memory," none of the music is really well-remembered by GP. Wicked just has better songs (at least in the first act), more interesting characters, and an actual plot that fits nicely into the whole villain origin story trend Hollywood has been loving for the past decade.    
2. Better Film Production: I don't know what about Les Misérables made Universal think Tom Hooper was a good choice for Cats. It seemed like neither he nor the production team had any idea how to adapt the play for film other than to create a paper-thin plot led by a no-personality main character they invented for the movie. Jon M. Chu and the cast (all of whom clearly adore Wicked, not just Ariana) give it a treatment that makes sense and use the movie format to dive deeper into the source material rather than distract away from it. 
3. Better Timing: The millennial theater kids who grew up with Wicked (including Ariana) are mostly in their 30s and 40s, and now have the time and disposable income to go support the movie. Cats the stageplay premiered in the early 1980s and had a big following when it started, but it feels a little too far past the 20-30 year nostalgia cycle for it to capture the hype Wicked is getting. Also worth noting Wicked fans have been begging for a movie adaptation since the mid-2000s, and I don't think I've ever seen a similar demand for Cats. 

[Kingdom]

3 hours ago, PYT said:

Would Wicked still smash if Taylor was the one playing Glinda?

who would they cast to sing as glinda?

[JO1s]

24 minutes ago, Kingdom said:

who would they cast to sing as glinda?

And dance