Trivia / Cats Don't Dance

• Acclaimed Flop: Critics gave the film positive reviews (74% "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes). Unfortunately, it flopped at the box office, making only $3.6 million against a $32 million budget due to the lack of marketing by Warner Bros. and Turner.
• Box Office Bomb: Even on a relatively small budget of $32 million, its original theatrical run brought back a mere $3.6 million as a result of failed marketing and (if Word of God is to be believed) lack of care from Turner during development.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Japanese dub, Danny is voiced by comedian Kazuki Kosakai.
• Children Voicing Children:
  • Ashley Peldon and Lindsay Ridgeway, the respective speaking and singing voices for Darla, were in their early 10s at the time of release.
  • Pudge is voiced by a young boy.
• Creator Killer: The small outbranch of Hanna-Barbera that was Turner Feature Animation (which had previously been H-B's own feature arm) had its short life end here — it was folded into WB's own Feature Animation arm, which itself was eliminated by 2003 after their own string of flops, some of which (like The Iron Giant) became cult hits themselves.
• Crossdressing Voices: In the Japanese dub, Pudge is voiced by Etsuko Kozakura. This is especially notable because in the original English version and other foreign dubs he is always voiced by males.
• Descended Creator: Mark Dindal provides the scratch voice for Max and directs the film.
• In Memoriam: A dedication of Gene Kelly, who died a year prior to the film's release, appears in the ending credits.
• Invisible Advertising: There was exactly one (we repeat, one) poster released for this movie. This might as well explain why the film was barely a blip on the radar when it came out, aside from that and a few Subway toys.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Subway sold figures of Danny, Sawyer, Pudge, and Woolie. A toy of Darla was planned, but was not released to the public due to concerns that it could be dangerous to young children.
• Non-Singing Voice: With a few characters:
  • Don Knotts's (T.W. Turtle) brief singing role is filled by session singer Rick Logan.
  • For the singing role, Ashley Peldon (Darla Dimple) was replaced by child actress and singer Lindsay Ridgeway.
  • For Sawyer, the non-singing voice was provided by Jasmine Guy. Her singing role is provided by the late jazz singer Natalie Cole.
• The Other Marty: According to Lauren Faust, Jasmine Guy was a last-minute replacement for Nancy Giles (of China Beach fame). She wasn't hired until all of Sawyer's animation had already been completed! This would explain why Sawyer's speaking voice and singing voice sound radically different in the final film.
• Permanent Placeholder: Mark Dindal originally provided the scratch voice for Max. However, because the production ran out of money later on, the producers retained the scratch track.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Really big time in the Latin American Spanish dub for Darla's voice actress, Cristina Hernández, who is normally type casted as voicing cute, heroic girls like Sakura Kinomoto from Cardcaptor Sakura, Blossom from The Powerpuff Girls or Lime from Saber Marionette J. Darla is anything but heroic.
  • In the German dub, Danny is voiced by Oliver Feld. Danny is one of Feld's few animation roles who is unambiguously straight (Feld is gay and most of his characters are Ambiguously Gay).
• Referenced by...:
  • The title of the movie is referenced in the All Dogs Go to Heaven: The Series episode "All Creatures Great and Dinky" when Marcy doesn't believe Charlie and Itchy are guardian angels.
  Charlie: What, you want us to dance on the head of a pin or something?!
  Marcy: No, everyone knows dogs don't dance.
  Charlie: No, that's cats, OK?
  • In the September 16, 2001 Baby Blues comic, this movie is mentioned among the VHS tapes Zoe and Hammie own when they're deciding which one to watch.
  • In the Helluva Boss episode "Seeing Stars", the little girl on Brennon Rager's show resembles Darla Dimple and much like Darla, she's suggested to be a lot less innocent off-camera.
  Blitzo: I saw her doing lines of coke in her dressing room!
  • In Saberspark's review of Spark, Saber finds General Zhong's Dumb Muscle Koko not that interesting a character, saying she's no Max from this movie.
  • In the South Park episode "Doubling Down", one scene in Cartman's Imagine Spot after learning Kyle is seeing Heidi recreates a shot from the Dark Reprise of "Big and Loud".
• Screwed by the Network: Just before the film came out, Time Warner purchased Turner. At the time, Warner's own feature animation division was developing Quest for Camelot and didn't want the inherited Cats to replace their "real" first animated feature (according to Tom Sito, one studio head was quoted as saying that he didn't want "Ted's film" to outdo them, implying a possible personal beef), so they dumped it on a crowded Easter holiday weekend^note (the other new wide releases were B*A*P*S*, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, The Sixth Man and The Devil's Own) while giving it next to no marketing whatsoever.
• Swan Song: Betty Lou Gerson came out of retirement to voice Frances. It would be Gerson's last performance before her 1999 death.
• Troubled Production: The head of Turner Feature Animation kept changing during production, and this (plus some of the honcho's plans to change the setting from the 40s to the 50s) kept the film in a state of flux for a bit.
• Uncredited Role: Gene Kelly was an uncredited choreographer on the film.
• Vindicated by Cable: Disney Channel, Starz and Cartoon Network to be specific (in the case of the latter, presumably to make up for their corporate cousins at WB having screwed it over to start). Cartoon Network was also known to air it frequently in the early-to-mid 2000s as part of their "Cartoon Theater" block.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film was originally intended to star Michael Jackson and would have revolved around stray cats that live among the sets and studio backlots. It would've incorporated a mix of live-action and CGI. However, after Jackson dropped out in 1994, Turner acquired the script and after a lot of studio mandates, changes in concepts and studio heads screw-overs, the film was released.
  • In the aforementioned Lauren Faust interview, Sawyer was supposed to be said to be older than Danny. This is never mentioned in the final film as executives thought Danny going for an older woman was inappropriate.
  • Then-Turner division New Line Cinema (itself now part of Warner Bros.) was initially interested in releasing the film, but it was handed over to Warner Bros. once Time Warner acquired Turner. One wonders how better New Line would have handled its marketing.
  • The original plan was to end the story with parodies of classic Golden Age film posters (such as Gone with the Wind), but this had to be scrapped because there was no budget left to pay for any rights. All of the posters in the final sequence are for films that the studio already owned, as this was the only way they could afford to finish at all.
  • Early production art reveals that the film Lil' Ark Angel was going to be called Sea Goin' Gal and Darla wore a sailor suit as opposed to her angel costume.
  • As previously mentioned, Subway had a Kids' Pak tie-in with the film, featuring toys of Danny, Sawyer, Pudge, and Woolie. Darla was also planned to have a toy, which would have featured two switchable facial expressions; smiling and sour. However, this toy was not released to the public, as there were concerns that it could be dangerous to young children.
  • Pudge was originally a regular baby bird, but he was later made into a penguin to make him cuter.
  • Before the films release Turner Feature Animation was in development of a film titled "Ray Gunn" directed by Brad Bird but due to Turner being purchased by Time Warner the film was scrapped but as of 2019 Bird announced that he would return to making the film under Skydance Animation.
  • In an alternate opening, Danny originally worked as a janitor at a movie theater in Kokomo before getting fired for dancing on the job and got his motivation to go to Hollywood after being thrown out. Despite this opening not making it into the final film, it's still paralleled by Darla's fate of having to be a theater janitor at the end.

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