Looks like cats really do have nine lives, because Universal has a renewed interest in the essentially abandoned film rights to Andrew Lloyd Webber's popular musical.

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The reasoning, Webber explained to the Daily Mail , comes down to the public's new appetite for musicals since Universal's recent adaptation of Les Miserables, which grossed $441.8 million worldwide."I haven’t seen the [Les Mis] film," Webber explains, "but it’s fantastic for musicals because everybody wants to make them again. Universal has now got Cats out of the drawer in which they locked it years ago when they bought the rights and suddenly they’re talking about a film."Cats was the second-longest running musical in Broadway history and is still performed on numerous stages around the world. The question remains, though, will those '80s leotards make the transition to the big screen or will Universal take a less, uh, iconic approach?

Lucy O'Brien is Entertainment Editor at IGN AU. Follow her ramblings on IGN or Twitter.