A new version of Tom Hooper’s film adaptation of the musical Cats with “improved visuals” is reportedly being sent to cinemas after a barrage of negative reviews in which the film was hammered for its “disturbing” CGI effects.

On Sunday, the Hollywood Reporter said it had seen a note that was sent by Universal Studios to thousands of cinemas in the US confirming that a new version with “some improved visual effects” was being distributed to chains.

Phil Clapp, the chief executive of the UK Cinema Association – the national trade body for cinema operators in Britain – said he understood the decision to “resupply” the film was a worldwide move and that UK cinemas were being notified of this on Monday.

“The resupply, I think, reflects the complexity of the CGI going into the film and the fact that in the end production went right down to the wire,” he added. “With the luxury of a little more time, the production team have had the opportunity to further finesse some of the visual effects.”

The decision to resupply a film is rare, with the Hollywood Reporter calling it “unheard of for a finished film already in release”.

In the US, Cats took $6.5m (£5m) on its opening day, while it managed £3.3m from its release in the UK and Ireland, which culminated in a total worldwide opening that was well below the £15m predicted by some analysts.

Some have pointed to the example of The Greatest Showman, which had a lukewarm opening of $8.8m in the US before going on to become a sustained hit at the box office, with the musical starring Hugh Jackman eventually taking $440m worldwide.

But the visual effects used in Hooper’s Cats, in which the animals, played by actors including Dame Judi Dench, Idris Elba and James Corden, are shown with some human body parts and others feline, have bemused and disturbed reviewers and audience members. Hooper admitted that he had barely finished the film, which cost $100m, before its New York premiere last week.

The Guardian said the effects used in the film would “haunt viewers for a generation”, while Rolling Stone said the film “easily scores as the bottom of the 2019 barrel”. The New York Times review said “a doctoral thesis could be written on how this misfire sputtered into existence”. US entertainment website the Ringer said the film was almost “an accidental masterpiece: not the Christmas blockbuster we need, but the one that we deserve” but adding that it was “too boring to get so performatively worked up about”.

At screenings, “an agog silence dominated in London and New York cinemas, as critics struggled to process the images which had gone before,” according to the Guardian’s film editor, Catherine Shoard, who pointed out that the sexualisation of the human felines in Cats made its U certificate surprising.

Play Video 2:24 Watch the Cats movie trailer - video

There was the odd dissenting voice. The Financial Times’s film critic, Nigel Andrews, who recently announced he was stepping down after 46 years and more that 10,000 reviews, said: “Cats lands on its feet with terrific choreography, Judi Dench, James Corden and Taylor Swift.” But most reviewers came down harshly on Hooper’s film, leaving it with an 18% rating on review aggregating site Rotten Tomatoes.

Some of its stars mounted a defence. Jason Derulo, who plays Rum Tum Tugger, told TMZ that “reviews don’t matter,” and that “at the end of the day, the people are going to go see it, there’s going to be a deportation to another dimension.

“When it came out on Broadway, it was the same thing. People were like: ‘What is this? This is something totally different.’ Any time that you defy the rules there’s going to be some pushback, obviously. It’s an incredible piece of art done by some of the best people in the world.”

Universal did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.