Shambles. That’s where the cinematic prospects of Dr. Seuss’s beloved The Cat in the Hat laid following a 2003 live action disaster starring Mike Myers. Thankfully, we’ve had 22 years to move past that debacle, and the fine crew at Warner Bros. Pictures Animation has rescued this cat and taken him home to a loving crew of filmmakers that promise to do much better. Today, we got our first look at the new trailer for Warner Animation’s The Cat in the Hat, and a conversation with the filmmakers and star Bill Hader!
When paying tribute to a legend like Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, the key thing to remember is to honor one of the greatest things he ever stood for: imagination. That’s what the fine filmmakers and animators at Warner Bros. Pictures Animation are completely focused on doing with their new vision of The Cat in the Hat, debuting February 27, 2026. Under the guidance of directors and writers Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja, it looks like we’re in for an absolutely gorgeous and colorful time at the movies, complete with fun, chaos, and worlds and creatures we’ve only ever dreamt of seeing.
We were given the chance to attend a trailer event with Carloni and Rivinoja, along with The Cat himself, Bill Hader, as they walked us through what to expect with this grand reimagining of the beloved children’s tale. However, before we get into all that, take a look at the trailer for yourself right here:
The Cat in the Hat features an all-star cast of diverse talent, with a terrific spotlight on many A-List POC actors. Joining Hader are Quinta Brunson, Bowen Yang, America Ferrera, Xochitl Gomez, Giancarlo Esposito, Tituss Burgess, Tiago Martinez, Matt Berry, and Paula Pell. It fills us with so much joy seeing such terrific representation in a film that definitely could have been filled to the brim with trendy Caucasian actors. It also suggests that, as the trailer shows, aspects of the film will focus on a Latino family. And that sounds good to us!
To dive deeper into this new lore for the timeless character, here’s what Hader, Carloni, and Rivinoja had to say about the film:
Moderator: The Cat in the Hat is such a classic figure and story, How did you both keep the heart of the original take while modernizing the movie for a new audience?
Rivinoja: That’s a great question. Look, the Cat in the Hat is a very beloved character and he’s classic and iconic and everyone has a relationship to him because he’s really this sort of wish fulfillment character. We call him this agent of chaos. And it’s just sort of what every kid loves and wants is to just sort of have this day of craziness and chaos. And we really tried to bring in what people love about the original book, which is a cat shows up, everybody goes crazy and has fun.
Carloni: Yeah, and then we kind of used the book more of a jumping point for us in the sense that the book became a question for us, which is, is this cat really just out there to have a good time for himself and making a mess, or is there more to it? We look at the book and realize that at the end of the book, the kid seems to be a little more confident with himself. Could it be that the cat is actually the greatest child psychologist? And so we basically used the book as our starting point, that’s how our movie starts, and then our movie becomes an expansion on that adventure. We decided to follow the cat at the end of the book to find out where does this guy go and discover, in fact, the truth about him.
Rivinoja: It’s his job.
Carloni: It’s his job.
What do you think makes storytelling and animation in The Cat in the Hat unique?
Carloni: Well, the uniqueness about animation is that much like in live action, we have amazing performers creating the characters with us. But then it becomes about truly anything has to be created from scratch, which means that everything is open for us to imagine what could it look like, what could it imagine. In live action, you get a lot of stuff for free in a way. Like you shoot something, there’s a tree in the background, you get that tree for free because it’s there. You have to build a tree and shape each leaf and build everything in the world, which means that you can do anything you want, which also is daunting about what can you create. And then that’s why we end up creating movies like the one we have just created, which we’re so excited about, where we can actually get to explore fantastical, incredible worlds that we’ve never seen before. And the uniqueness thing about this book, that Erica and I took advantage of is that it’s the only Seuss book where a Seussian, magical, whimsical character enters the real world to meet the children. And so we decided to try to embrace that and enhance that so that every time the cat enters from his world into the real world, and then we navigate into fantastical world, we created entirely different looks of picture, entirely different aesthetics, and entirely different animation styles. So our world in our movie is based on many, many different worlds and different aesthetics where we traverse through in our adventure.
Incredible it’s it is really stunning. I’m gonna definitely have some more animation questions for you as we go along Yeah, it’s gonna be hard for me not to focus on it, but we’ve got we should probably talk to the man of the hour Hader. You’ve portrayed The Cat in the Hat on Saturday Night Live.
Hader: That’s right
And you spoke at CinemaCon about actively chasing this film. What is it about the character and his fun-seeking, living-in-present, anything-can-happen whirlwind of a presence that appeals to you so strongly?
Hader: I don’t know. The SNL thing was — they didn’t write that because I love Cat in the Hat. It was more like I think the writers were going through an issue in their marriage and decided to use the Cat in the Hat as a way of indirectly commenting to their spouse at home, I think is what was happening… But no, I just have always been a, you know, like everybody, like remember reading the book as a kid, and then reading it to my kids, and then, you know, I’ve worked with these guys before on different projects, and I’ve known them forever, so you know, the combination of these two and the chance to play, you know, such an iconic character was, you know, I was like, yes. So yeah, I did chase it.
Rivinoja: There was a mutual chasing.
Hader: Yeah, mutual chasing.
Rivinoja: You were running toward each other.
Hader: Yeah.
Rivinoja: It’s the best kind of chasing.
Rivinoja: Exactly.
Rivinoja: Yeah.
Rivinoja: Because there’s an end to it.
Yeah. Everybody’s having fun.
Hader: Yeah.
Well, I’m excited based on what we see in the trailer so far. It’s it’s got such a wonderful sense of humor to it I’m gonna jump to another question from one of our wonderful journalists. Since The Cat in the Hat is known for comedic bits and you started on SNL, did you channel any of the skills you gained from the show for this role?
Hader: Well, yeah, I mean maybe a little just because they were so loose with um, they wrote this incredibly funny script. And so you didn’t have you know, sometimes you do these things and you’re like, oh man I gotta like really improvise a lot and try to make it work somehow but this was not like that the script was like so insanely funny. And then on top of that, they were like, yeah, try stuff. So there was some little improvs here and there.
Carloni: There was a lot of it
Hader: Some of them didn’t. It was funny. I would improvise sometimes, and you could just see them go, “let’s do another one.”
Rivinoja: Let’s do one as written.
Hader: Let’s do one as written, yeah, because it would go too far off. Because it’s weird because they have it in their heads and I’m just reacting to the words and you know so you try a lot of things and but they’re very good at communicating like okay you know here’s what the scene is and here’s the emotion of it and here’s what we need to try to convey. So, but as far as SNL, yeah, I guess that kind of like taking the material and then like improvising on top of it, you know, maybe.
Yeah. Did you get to sneak any obscure impressions in?
Hader: I don’t want to, I don’t want to do any, you know, spoilers. But I’m sure all the kids at home know who, you know, James Mason is. Or Herbert Marshall. Trouble in Paradise, 1932, big actor. He had no leg, he lost his leg in World War I. But the Herbert Marshall thing, they were like, could you give us a Herbert Marshall? The kids really like…
Carloni: All four quadrants.
Hader: We gotta hit all the taste clusters.
Rivinoja: He did, Bill does play a lot of different characters it gets to use a bunch of different voices.
Hader: So it’s um, it was really exciting to see him also I got to do some stuff that I just do in life. Just like stupid weird things with my voice that I would just do in between takes and they would go “Oh, could you do that character” and I was like, “That thing? That just annoys people.” “No, no, no do it do it do it.”
Carloni: Don’t give anything away, but there is one scene in which the character has to literally move backward in time and usually use filters and digital techniques to rewind voices. But he’s able to create the sound of a voice moving forward and warping and playing backward that we had to tell our animators, “Just you know, that’s actually Hader.”
Hader: That’s what I was referring to you. I do that in life. If I mess something up and they’re like, “oh, it’s supposed to go back that way.” And I go, “oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.” And I’ll go back over to it. And they’re like, “hey, do that again.”
Carloni: People used to be burned as witches for these kind of skills.
This is like a resurgence of the golden age of voice acting.
Rivinoja: Yeah
Carloni: That’s right.
Hader: I’m glad you guys like it, most people find it obnoxious.
I was just thinking that gives me hope because my son is always telling me to not do voices. So maybe someday someone will tell me actually do that thing.
Hader: It will not be your kid, they hate it
Definitely not. Okay, so we’ve got another question for Erica and Alessandro. The new film introduces multiple things after Thing 1 and 2, a very exciting part of the trailer. What can we expect from them?
Rivinoja: Well, they are not well-behaved, I will say. They are consistent with the things that you meet in the book. And as you saw in the trailer, we have Thing 1, but we also have Thing 3, and many, many more. There’s many, many that come up. The Cat in the Hat is chaos, and The Things are extra chaos on top of that. And they’re so cute, too. That’s the other thing is I love how cute they are. So you get all that chaos from them, but you’re still like, oh, you’re cute. You’re cute, yeah.
Hader: My kid saw the movie, my 10-year-old, and her and her friends, that they were just upset. They’re still obsessed with The Things.
No, that was like one of the first things I noticed is how adorable they are. Also, again, like, it really feels like it’s so true to, like, the Seuss aesthetic. Like, he’s so specific with his characterization, but it feels very, like, classic and timeless in its design, too. Like, I feel like those are gonna be extremely popular with children and everyone.
Rivinoja: We think that as well. Our art team was really amazing about using Seuss’s aesthetic and his iconic shape language and character language to really help design those. So they feel, there’s so many new characters in this movie, but they all feel like Seuss. They’re so talented. So talented to do that.
No, one of my favorite things that you notice in the trailer is that obviously this is The Cat in the Hat’s job and it seems like this is kind of an industry of rhyming animals and objects and we’ve got like the yak with a pack and like, so there’s a lot of different characters. Is there anything else we should know about like this world of characters that’s been created?
Carloni: Well, that’s the thing is that as we follow Cat at the end of the book and we discover that entertaining children and sad kids on a rainy day is his job, there’s a whole corporation. It was basically an institution to create this. And as we know, there’s Cat in a Hat, and we meet Pig in a Wig, Yak with a Pack, Ox in a Box, Owl in a Towel, Goat in a Coat.
Rivinoja: Bug in a Mug.
Carloni: Bug in a Mug. And this one is called Rat with a Bat. And when you complain about the fact that, oh my god, Cat in a Hat makes such a mess, but you don’t want to get rat with a bat.
Rivinoja: Yeah, Rat with a Bat is… He’s from the bad part of town. And then there’s Mouse in a Blouse, too.
Carloni: Mouse in a Blouse, and then there’s Sherry from HR, which is played by Quinta Brunson, which is…
Hader: Yeah, she’s really funny.
Rivinoja: She’s hilarious, and The Cat in the Hat and Sherry from HR are best friends. And getting to see Bill and Quinta in the room together was just like, oh, comedy, comedy icons together.
Hader: Yeah, they were very… Yeah, she’s amazing. Yeah, she’s so funny.
Rivinoja: She’s hilarious.
Well, this is such a fantastic voice cast that’s being assembled here. You guys have…
Hader: Matt Berry. He’s like one of my idols, Matt Berry. Yeah, Paula Pell who I absolutely adore. I worked with Paula at SNL. She’s unbelievable.
So funny.
Hader: So funny.
Rivinoja: Bowen Yang
Hader: Bowen Yang, Unbelievable.
Was most of the recording done all together? Like, were you guys able to be in studio together most of the time?
Carloni: A few times. It’s a rare thing, because you know, the thing about animation is that you don’t get to book your actors all at the same time. But we still insisted in wanting to make sure that this Bill and his character had something to play against. And so Xochitl Gomez, which plays our Gabby, one of our stars, that she’s such a breath of fresh air when she comes in the room, as opposed to this glummy little bastard.
Hader: I know, I’m looking at my stocks.
Carloni: But when Xochitl came in, when Quinta Bronson came in, watching these masters bring the scene to life is so exciting.
Hader: Yeah, I have sunglasses on. We ready?
Carloni: Picture that. Quinta Bronson comes in.
That is exactly what I was picturing.
Hader: They were all so good. And it was so nice, because sometimes people don’t want to do that in animation. They kind of just want to be on their own. And they were very open to that, and that was cool.
I mean, yeah, it’s the cast alone is incredibly exciting. That’s the coolest thing about animations I feel like you get to kind of like assemble all of these incredible different parts like an amazing art team obviously people who’ve like worked and like nourished the animation and like medium, and then you’ve got like all these incredible actors, voice actors, performers that come in. It’s like, when it comes together right, it’s just beautiful.
Rivinoja: It’s so, and it’s just fun. At the end of the day, it’s just, you know, we get paid to be silly all the time, and it’s, it’s a pretty good job, I suppose.
That’s incredible. Well, we have another question from one of our journalists. What was the most challenging thing about voicing this beloved character?
Hader: I’ll say there’s, I mean, really, I just, nothing really, because I just felt like I was in really good hands, you know, with these guys and the script. So I felt very free, you know, there was nothing really too, you know, challenging. I mean, like anything, people think like, “oh, we roll out of bed, and you get to go and voice a cartoon and animate a movie, and it’s really easy.” It’s actually so exhausting afterwards, because you’re essentially just screaming for four hours. And then you’re saying the same lines over and over again, and they just start to lose meaning. And then you kind of, they’ve watched me have a full-on existential crisis in the booth. And they’re like, all right, we’re all just going to leave. Just kind of leave me in the booth. They turn the lights off, and I just sit there. No. But no, but it yeah, that’s the only thing is I just I have to like very consciously pace myself because you do just get like so tired just screaming I can only imagine.
I mean this kind of ties into the next there’s the next journalist question. Did exploring the physicality of the Cat in the Hat help you find layers of your vocal performance and speaking of the exhausting I mean like is it a lot of movement.
Hader: They were shooting me for some of the stuff, I don’t know if they used any of that.
Rivinoja: Yeah, we did. We shoot something called Lipstick Cam, which is where we have the actors’ performances recorded, just because it makes it so much easier for the actors, especially doing lip sync, and just to get expressions, I mean, sorry, for the animators to get expressions. So we definitely use a lot of Bill’s physicality for that, and yeah, it was great.
Carloni: I mean, it’s interesting because if there’s a slight difference between directing live-action and animation, it’s also a little bit of that, is that once the performers have created the role in a booth, then how do you transform that into a character running or jumping or doing something? And it becomes, I think the reason why people call us in the animation industry nerds, is because we have to become hyper-focused with minutiae and understanding what does it mean to perform something with your elbow close to your ribcage as opposed to open or leaning forward as opposed to leaning back and you find yourself hyper-analyzing everything because you have to recreate the mannerism of a character while Bill is in a booth performing something. And his face gives you so much information, but it’s not like he can run around on set. And so if you have to translate that, it becomes quite a task to know exactly what is the mannerism of this character? How does he do something magical or supernatural or very physical from a performance that came from a booth? And so that kind of translation becomes where a lot of the job is in animation, for the animator specifically. To truly understand the mannerism and the physical language of a character.
Rivinoja: Wait, people call us nerds?
Carloni: We’ll talk about it.
Hader: I prefer the term egghead.
Rivinoja: Okay, thank you.
Hader: I call you guys egghead.
Rivinoja: Oh, thanks.
Hader: No, them, the animators.
Rivinoja: Oh, okay.
Hader: Dorks.
Rivinoja: Totally different, absolutely.
Hader: Yeah, that was when I zoomed in to tell the animators, good job, and I was like, what’s up, dorks? And all their heads turned.
Carloni: They know.
Hader: They know.
Yeah, it wasn’t the first time for sure, as a former animator. No, that’s actually one of my favorite parts about like when you get to see the process a little bit of like animators putting a little bit of themselves into the performance to like the because even when you have like an incredible performer that gives you some of the physicality of the character it is a lot of the figuring out exact movements and like recording yourself and getting to try getting to see how the animators like record themselves saying the lines versus the final product.
Rivinoja: The way the animators shoot reference of themselves is so fun.
Carloni: And shamelessly share.
Rivinoja: Yeah.
Carloni: It’s like, you want me to see that? Are you sure?
Rivinoja: It’s them in their bathrooms acting. It’s so much fun. I would love to see a cut of the movie of just animators reference to it, because it is really, it’s so appealing.
Hader: Yeah, and then it’s always bad, too, as an actor, when they show me a scene and you hear their rough track of my, lines the scratch track and you just are like I mean, that’s really good. I don’t know if I should I don’t know how I’m gonna beat that, that’s really funny.
No, I mean, it’s a lot of animators have ended up voicing characters because a lot of them end up just being good I mean, it’s funny. I do feel like it kind of speaks to a lot of the passion that’s in this particular little sub-genre of filmmaking. Speaking of animation, we’ve gotten to one of my favorite questions, something I’m super excited to talk about. Alessandro, you’ve worked as the lead animator on many classic films, including Kung Fu Panda and The Croods. What are you excited to share about the animation style that you, Erica, and your partners at DNEG Animation will bring to The Cat in the Hat?
Carloni: Yeah, I think I hinted at this before, that the fact that, yes, you’re right, I was lucky enough to work on many projects, like Kung Fu Panda, or How to Train Your Dragon, where you do get to create world-building and characters, which is the most fun part of our job. But the unique thing, probably, about this movie, which is based on this book, is the fact that we do traverse different universes and different worlds. And so Erica and I truly realized that we can take advantage of that and use it as an opportunity to create different aesthetics. And so when we discovered a cat works in a specific place, we decided that could be the Seuss world. And truly, in the rendering of our surfaces, in the shape language of our world, we figure, let’s just create this as if it’s the world of Seuss. But then the cat enters the real world. And so we created a world that is far more grounded and believable and not quite photorealistic, still very stylized, but still much more believable and relatable when it comes to the behavior of the light and the look of the movie. And then the cat will take these kids on a fantastical journey, without giving too much away, through their own memories, in order to understand, empower them in what they need to go, in the journey that they need to have for our story. And that third world becomes yet another aesthetics, yet another stylization for animation. And so the unique thing about this movie is that you get to see multiple movies in one, in a way, because we truly traverse different universes, and we truly try to put that on screen as an adventure, as we traverse different realms and different environments.
Rivinoja: You’ll notice it in the trailer, too. You’ll see there’s different looks and aesthetics in it, and it’s just, it’s really cool. It’s very cool.
Yeah, I was wondering if there was maybe some use of, like, toon shaders. I’m not sure if that’s still the preferred nomenclature, but it looked like The Cat in the Hat world is leaning into a more, like, almost 2D aesthetic while still using 3D animation.
Carloni: We have explorers. You’re right, it’s no longer the term, but it is based on the fact that the way we treat our surfaces, as opposed to being hyper-realistic, like realistic fur or light behavior, we try to portray it as an illustration. Even though it’s grounded, believable, and three-dimensional, somehow you feel like you’re entering a Seuss book. And then the cat enters the real world, and we try to portray it as that. And so, a lot of our work went into trying to give the audience the experience of traversing different universes.
This question is to Bill. What did the legacy of Dr. Seuss and The Cat in the Hat mean to you as a child and your foundation today as an adult?
Hader: I don’t know. I mean, I think the biggest thing was just, I just remember those being the first book. I’m a big reader and I think those were the first books I remember. Reading on my own, you know and just taking into you know, it’s a habit I had I get in bed and you read a book, you know And it’s like I started that with those books and I remember collecting them I had you know seeing the binder, you know, the binding that side and just you know, having those all up, you know my room and so Yeah, that’s like the beginning of that process as a kid and then you know see my kids have that and then you know you get up to you like you know young adult books and then fear of flying that book But no so yeah, that’s that’s basically you know.
What was it like like crafting the comedic tone for this and how much like what were there other references outside of like Seuss that you guys wanted to lean into?
Rivinoja: Yeah, well, I mean, I think the important part for Ale and I was definitely, we wanted to make ourselves laugh with it. We have long histories in comedy and I think a lot of people can think that, oh, it’s children’s, it’s for children, so you have to talk down and make it not sophisticated and smart, but we wanted to make it really, really fun for literally the whole family. There’s some sneaky stuff in there for adults, there’s really funny physical humor for everyone because everyone loves it. There’s a lot of very classy fart jokes
Hader: Yeah you saw in the trailer
Rivinoja: Yes, yes and by the way myself, I’m not above a fart joke
Carloni: On average the three of us are three 12 year olds
Hader: Let’s just be honest when I was recording that everybody was laughing
Rivinoja: Yeah
Hader: I don’t care what they say now we were all laughing
Rivinoja: We were. So it was really just Dr. Seuss had that sophisticated humor that worked on all levels, and we just really wanted to reach into that and have really fun wordplay, but also, you know, it’s animation. What are we doing if we’re not having physical comedy and big jokes and stuff? So we really wanted to just make people laugh, and I think we did.
Carloni: Yeah, the thing is that what’s interesting to me also is that. Let’s be honest, all of us are working many different projects and we always tell ourselves, and the studio tells ourselves, we want to make it for the whole family and four quadrants, and of course it’s our job. But this book, in a way, came preloaded with that in the sense that there are thousands of households right now where there’s an eight-year-old boy being read by the story from mom, and mom was read the story in the ‘80s from grandma, and grandma was read the story from great grandma in the ‘60s. So this book comes preloaded with a multi-generational fan base, which is great for us. At the same time, it’s extremely daunting, which means there’s a lot of generation out there who have expectation about this character and that love this character. So hopefully we’ll make them all proud.
Thank you so much for you guys for being here. This was such a lovely conversation.
Carloni: Thank you for the flattery and the compliments.
Hader: I could have used a couple more compliments.
I was trying to hold back.
Hader: Whatever whatever
Thank you so much everyone and have a great day.
The Cat in the Hat hits theaters on February 27, 2026!
