I believe it was Sam I Am who once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,†so please take it with a grain of salt when we tell you that Warner Bros. — of Coyote vs. Acme infamy — is working on an animated take on The Cat in the Hat. The studio announced a theatrical release date of March 6, 2026, which still gives CEO David “Onceler†Zaslav plenty of time to come up with creative ways of burying the whole thing after it wraps production. But let’s all of us lead with optimism and just enjoy what sounds like a fun take on a towering giant of the American literary canon.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Bill Hader will voice the Cat, leading an ensemble cast that will include Quinta Brunson, Bowen Yang, Xochitl Gomez, Matt Berry, and Paula Pell. The article doesn’t say who will be playing which of Dr. Seuss’s characters, but I beg, plead, and pray that Berry narrates and Yang voices the cunty fish.
Curiously, this won’t be Hader’s first time playing the Cat; he did his own spin on it on Saturday Night Live in 2014. In that sketch, Hader played the Cat with a dead-eyed, haunted quality, looking like Mr. Mistoffelees in the throes of a depressive episode. The joke of the sketch was that the Cat had previously had a fling with the kids’ mother — played by Cecily Strong and named Linda — and he may or may not be the kids’ father. It’s an odd, disturbing codeine dream of a sketch, heightened by Hader’s commitment to playing the Cat super-straight. If he manages to voice the Cat as something partway between that and Mike Myers’s doomed 2003 live-action version, this might be the best Cat in the Hat adaptation yet. In this day and age of kids’-movie voice casting, we should just be grateful we didn’t get Chris Pratt in the Hat.