The year 2016 will be notable for a number of reasons. The US will go through a presidential election, the Olympics will take place in Rio and, most importantly, we’ll finally get to see the film where Kevin Spacey plays a man stuck in the body of a cat.
The first trailer for Nine Lives has arrived and it’s littered with un-fur-gettable moments. Spacey plays a “daredevil billionaire” who puts all his time into his job but, and this might surprise you, doesn’t spend enough time with his family.
Sounds like he’s got an important lesson to learn, right? Well, luckily, he finds himself in a mystical pet store, owned by Christopher Walken, and after buying a cat called Mr Fuzzypants for his daughter, has an accident that leaves him trapped inside his new purchase. While inside the cat, he must somehow learn to love his family more.
While it’s a thrilling prospect, it’s sadly not quite the film many hoped for when it was initially announced. Spacey himself took to Twitter last summer to dispel rumours he would be donning a furry costume to actually play the cat.
The comedy comes from director Barry Sonnenfeld, who has decent, if dusty, experience in the genre with the Men in Black and Addams Family franchises. It’s written by five people, which should lead to a wide variety of cat puns.
It’s an interesting career move for Spacey, whose Netflix thriller House of Cards is entering its fourth season as he steps up to take the reins of failing Hollywood studio Relativity. But then he’s also set to voice the CEO of a company called Puppy Co in Boss Baby, an animated film about a “fast-talking, briefcase-carrying baby”.
Nine Lives lands in US and UK cinemas on 5 August.
