'Cat Person' Movie Gets First Trailer, Reminding Social Media Of Controversial Short Story And Renewing Jokes

To a certain subset of the internet, the words "Cat Person" are an activation phrase that triggers flashbacks to a discourse war from six years ago when the New Yorker published a viral short story in December 2017 called Cat Person about a woman who had a bad romantic experience.

That story, like "Zola" before it, has become an indie movie starring Nicholas Braun (best known for playing Cousin Greg in Succession), and its trailer dropped yesterday.

The film features Emila Jones as Margot, the woman who goes on an ill-fated date with Nicholas Braun's Robert. In the story, Margot and Robert have a poor kiss and an awkward intimate encounter before they stop seeing each other, ending with Robert sending Margot mean text messages. The film, directed by Susanna Fogel, is billed as a "thriller."

The trailer received a mixed response on social media, as many felt the story itself wouldn't translate well to the big screen (and indeed, much of the trailer showcases the two leads simply texting) but also because they felt the story was less interesting than the real-life circumstances behind the story's creation.

In 2021, Alexis Nowicki published a piece in Slate describing how she discovered that Cat Person was based on her life experiences, though she'd never met its author, Kristen Roupenian.

The author based the story on the experience of her friend "Charles" (Robert) and his romantic tryst with Nowicki, named "Margot" in the story. The story was embellished with Roupenian's own experiences, and Nowicki clarified that her tryst with "Charles" was not as bleak as the short story made it seem. "Charles" passed away suddenly in 2020.

Others felt the film was in poor taste since "Charles," aka real-life Robert, had passed away, and much of the world thinks of him as the cruel and manipulative man in the story, though Nowicki's testimony insists he was much kinder in real life than "Robert."

Some believe it worse since "Charles" is suspected to have killed himself, though that has never been confirmed.

The film will be released in theaters on October 6th but has already premiered at Sundance where critics voiced frustration with the liberties it takes on the short story, moving past the story's open-ending and providing more context to the "Robert" character.