London, Dec 3 (IANS): "Cats" director Tom Hooper has responded to the backlash he got after the release of the first trailer, saying that he found the backlash 'quite entertaining'.

The first look at the film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical was released in July, and was met with negative response from fans. Much of the Internet was critical of the film's nightmarish visual effects used to bring the digitally enhanced cat people to life, according to slashfilm.com.

In an interview to Empire magazine, Hooper said that the explosive response to the trailer caught him off guard.

"I was just so fascinated because I didn't think it was controversial at all. So it was quite entertaining. 'Cats' was apparently the number-one trending topic in the world, for a good few hours at least," said the London-born filmmaker.

Hooper claims that the trailer response helped when it came to making tweaks.

"We'd only finished shooting in March, so all the visual effects (in the trailer) were at quite an early stage," he explained.

"Possibly there were, in the extremity in some of the responses, some clues in how to keep evolving (the production). When you watch the finished film, you'll see that some of the designs of the cats have moved on since then, and certainly our understanding of how to use the technology to make them work has gone up, too," he added.

The star-studded musical "Cats" is set to release in India on January 3, 2020. It features Taylor Swift, Jennifer Hudson, James Corden, Idris Elba, Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson, Judi Dench and Jason Derulo amongst others.