The upcoming ‘The Cat in the Hat’ is a new introduction to a beloved character that expands on the things we already know about him. Voiced by the talented Bill Hader, this animated theatrical feature film is an all-new, epic adventure where mischief, magic, and mayhem reign supreme.
The film also includes the voices of Quinta Brunson (‘Abbott Elementary’), Bowen Yang (‘Wicked’), Xochitl Gomez (‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’), Matt Berry (‘What We Do In The Shadows’), and Paula Pell (‘Summer of 69’).
A scene from 2026’s ‘The Cat in the Hat’. Photo: Warner Bros.
Moviefone was in attendance at a virtual press conference celebrating the release of the first teaser trailer for ‘The Cat in the Hat’ featuring actor Bill Hader, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation President Bill Damaschke, and writers/directors Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja, to learn behind-the-scenes details of this new animated feature.
Related Article: Bill Hader, Quinta Brunson and More To Voice New ‘Cat in the Hat’ Movie
1) ‘The Cat in the Hat’ Is A Completely Original Take On The Character
Warner Bros. Pictures Animation President Bill Damaschke. Photo: Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Pictures Animation President Bill Damaschke explains how ‘The Cat in the Hat’ might feature a beloved character, but it is an original take on him, which is something we have not seen before.
Bill Damaschke: Animation’s always been a cornerstone of Warner Bros. but in this this next chapter called Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, we’re really doubling down on that commitment to original stories as well as really innovative takes on some of our beloved characters and worlds. And for ‘The Cat in the Hat’ to be our first film just seems like the perfect, perfect project because it’s actually all of those things at the same time. It’s a completely original take on a character that I think a lot of people have a connection to, but handled and brought to life by our filmmakers and by the very singular actor who plays the cat. It just comes out in a way that’s bigger, better, more amazing, and more whimsical than you could ever imagine.
2) Bill Hader Says This Is The First Book He Remembers Reading
(L to R) Erica Rivinoja, Alessandro Carloni, and Bill Hader attend a press conference event for ‘The Cat in the Hat’ trailer launch. Photo: Warner Bros.
Bill Hader recalls that the first books he remembers reading by himself are Dr. Suess books, and that he then read them to his kids, so he was thrilled to be a part of this story.
Bill Hader: : Like everybody, I remember reading that book as a kid, and then reading it to my kids, and then, I’ve worked with these guys before on different projects, and I’ve known them forever, so the combination of these two and the chance to play such an iconic character? I was like, yes. The biggest thing was I’m a big reader and I think those were the first books I remember reading on my own. It’s a habit I had. I get in bed and read a book, and I started that with those books. I remember collecting them.
3) Bill Hader Might Be Great At Improv, But Improvising Didn’t Always Work With ‘The Cat in the Hat’
A scene from 2026’s ‘The Cat in the Hat’. Photo: Warner Bros.
Bill Hader is well known for his impressions and improvising skills, but when talking about ‘The Cat in the Hat’ he admits that this was not a movie where improvising worked in the booth.
Bill Hader: They wrote this incredibly funny script and so you didn’t have [to improvise]. Sometimes you do these things and you’re like, oh man I gotta really improvise a lot and try to make it work somehow but this was not like that. The script was lso insanely funny and then on top of that, they were like, yeah, try stuff. So there was some little improvs here and there. It was funny. I would improvise sometimes, and you could just see them go, let’s do another one. Let’s do one as written, because it would go too far off. It’s weird because they have it in their heads and I’m just reacting to the words and so you try a lot of things and but they’re very good at communicating what the scene is and here’s the emotion of it and here’s what we need to try to convey.
4) Expect More Things Than Just Thing 1 and Thing 2
(L to R) Erica Rivinoja, Alessandro Carloni, and Bill Hader attend a press conference event for ‘The Cat in the Hat’ trailer launch. Photo: Warner Bros.
Thing 1 and Thing 2 are such an integrel part of the story of ‘The Cat in the Hat’. The fillmmakers did not want to say too much about them, but did confirm they will play a role in the movie and there will be more than you might expect.
Erica 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. So you get all that chaos from them, but you’re still like, oh, you’re cute.
5) The New Characters All Have A Dr. Suess Asthetic
(L to R) Erica Rivinoja, Alessandro Carloni, and Bill Hader attend a press conference event for ‘The Cat in the Hat’ trailer launch. Photo: Warner Bros.
‘The Cat in the Hat’ expands on the world that we all know and love, but these new characters will feel as if they perfectly fit into that world, complete with a Dr. Suess asthetic.
Erica Rivinoja: 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.
Alessandro 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. 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.
6) Even Though It Is Rare, The Voice Cast Recorded In The Studio Together A Few Times
(L to R) Erica Rivinoja, Alessandro Carloni, and Bill Hader attend a press conference event for ‘The Cat in the Hat’ trailer launch. Photo: Warner Bros.
In animation, it is not very common for the voice actors to record in the booth together. For ‘The Cat in the Hat’ there were times that they were able to do this, which the filmmakers believe improved perfmances.
Alessandro Carloni: It’s a rare thing, because 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. So Xochitl Gomez, which plays our Gabby, one of our stars, that she’s such a breath of ffresh air when she comes in the room. But when Xochitl came in, when Quinta Bronson came in, watching these masters bring the scene to life is so exciting.
7) Voicing A Character Is More Exhausting Than You Might Think, Says Bill Hader
(L to R) Erica Rivinoja, Alessandro Carloni, and Bill Hader attend a press conference event for ‘The Cat in the Hat’ trailer launch. Photo: Warner Bros.
When talking about his exprience in the booth, Bill Hader says that he felt like he was in good hands with the directors, but there are still challenges when it comes to voicing animation.
Bill Hader: People think you 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. 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 leave me in the booth. They turn the lights off, and I just sit there. No. But that’s the only thing is I just I have to very consciously pace myself because you do just get so tired just screaming.
8) Bill Hader Has Played The Cat in the Hat Before… On SNL
(L to R) Erica Rivinoja, Alessandro Carloni, and Bill Hader attend a press conference event for ‘The Cat in the Hat’ trailer launch. Photo: Warner Bros.
‘The Cat in the Hat’ will not be the first time that Bill Hader has played this character. He actually portrayed him on ‘Saturday Night Live’. While he does love the book, and wanted to play him, that was not the reason behind the sketch.
Bill Hader: The ‘SNL’ thing was, they didn’t write that because I love ‘Cat in the Hat’. It was more, 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.
9) ‘The Cat in the Hat’ Book Is Used As A Jumping Point
A scene from 2026’s ‘The Cat in the Hat’. Photo: Warner Bros.
The story told in ‘The Cat in the Hat’ is still tied to the book, however it is used as more of a starting point, explains Alessandro Carloni.
Alessandro Carloni: We 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? 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.
10) Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja Embraced The Uniquness Of The Book To Create A Whimsical World
(L to R) Erica Rivinoja, Alessandro Carloni, and Bill Hader attend a press conference event for ‘The Cat in the Hat’ trailer launch. Photo: Warner Bros.
Alessandro Carloni explains that in ‘The Cat in the Hat’ one of Dr. Suess’ characters enters the real world and interacts with children, something that is unique to this story. They used that to their advantage while creating this animated film.
Alessandro Carloni: 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. 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.
The Cat takes on his toughest assignment yet… to cheer a pair of siblings struggling with their move to a new town. Read the Plot
What is the plot of ‘Cat in the Hat’?
The Cat in the Hat (Bill Hader) attempts to cheer up a pair of siblings when they move into a new town.
Who is in the cast of ‘Cat in the Hat’?
- Bill Hader as the Cat in the Hat
- Xochitl Gomez as Gabby
- Tiago Martinez as Sebastian
- Matt Berry as the Fish
- America Ferrera as Gabby and Sebastian’s mother
‘The Cat in the Hat’ opens in theaters on February 27th 2026. Photo: Warner Bros.