The Cat in the Hat Returns: Every Dr. Seuss Movie Revisited

In November 2003, Mike Myers put on a striped hat, and the result was so poorly received that Dr. Seuss’s widow stopped approving live action adaptations of his books. Twenty three years later, the Cat is coming back, this time fully animated, with Bill Hader under the hat.

The new film opens in theaters on November 6, 2026, and it arrives with a lot of history behind it. Dr. Seuss movies have produced the highest grossing Christmas film of all time, a box office flop so painful that its own writer disowned it, and a live action comedy that ended up with a 10 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Here is a look at the new Cat in the Hat, and at how every Dr. Seuss adaptation before it did in theaters and with fans.

The New Cat in the Hat

Warner Bros. Pictures Animation acquired the animated rights in 2018, and the film is produced with Dr. Seuss Enterprises. Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja directed and wrote it, and Bill Hader voices the Cat and serves as an executive producer. That makes Hader the second Saturday Night Live alum to wear the hat, after Myers, and both show up in our look at the history and cultural impact of Saturday Night Live. The voice cast also includes Matt Berry as a talking goldfish named Waffles, Quinta Brunson, Xochitl Gomez, Giancarlo Esposito, America Ferrera, Bowen Yang, Paula Pell, and Tituss Burgess.

The story is loosely based on the 1957 book. In this version, the Cat works at a place called the I.I.I.I. Institute and is facing his last chance to keep his job. His assignment is to cheer up two siblings, Gabby and Sebastian, who are struggling after moving to a new town. DNEG Animation handled the animation, which mixes 2D and 3D styles.

It took a while to get here. The film was first set for March 6, 2026, then moved up to February 27, and then pushed to November in August 2025. Warner Bros. sees it as the start of what it calls the Seussiverse, with a Thing One and Thing Two spinoff planned and an animated Oh, the Places You’ll Go! scheduled for March 17, 2028.

The early reviews are mixed. On Metacritic, it opened with a score of 47 from its first batch of critics. IGN called it funny and likable, even if it runs longer than it needs to. The A.V. Club said Hader works better as the Cat than Myers did. The Associated Press criticized the messy plot, and Fortress of Solitude praised the striking animation while saying the story feels hollow. Early tracking reported by Variety pointed to a $20 million to $25 million domestic opening, which would be the lowest debut for a major Dr. Seuss adaptation if it holds.

Where It All Started: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953)

Before the Grinch or the Cat ever reached theaters, Theodor Seuss Geisel tried Hollywood himself. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., released by Columbia Pictures on July 1, 1953, is the only fiction feature he ever wrote. He wrote the story, the screenplay with Allan Scott, and the song lyrics.

The plot is pure Seuss. A boy named Bart hates his piano lessons, falls asleep, and dreams he is trapped at an institute where the sinister Dr. Terwilliker forces boys to play one enormous piano. A preview audience reacted so badly that the studio cut nine of the original 20 musical numbers and reshot parts of the film. It did not help. At the Hollywood premiere, people started walking out after 15 minutes, and actor Hans Conried later said that by the end, only one boy remained, waiting for his mother. Conried also said it never even made back the cost of its prints.

Seuss reportedly called it a “debaculous fiasco” and left it out of his official biography. Time has been kinder. Critics later reappraised it as a strange, imaginative cult film, and it now holds an 83 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Special That Set the Bar: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966)

The adaptation that taught everyone how to do Seuss right was only 24 minutes long. How the Grinch Stole Christmas! premiered on CBS on December 18, 1966. Chuck Jones directed it, Geisel wrote the screenplay, and Boris Karloff narrated and voiced the Grinch. Jones was already a Looney Tunes legend, and as we noted in our list of underrated Bugs Bunny cartoons, he is behind the most iconic run of Bugs Bunny shorts. Thurl Ravenscroft sang You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, though he was left out of the credits, and Geisel later apologized and wrote to newspaper columnists to make sure people knew who the singer was.

CBS repeated the special every Christmas season until 1988, and it has kept airing on network and cable television ever since. TV Guide ranked it first on its 2004 list of the best family holiday specials, and it holds a perfect 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It also inspired the 1977 follow up, Halloween Is Grinch Night, which won an Emmy.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

When the Grinch finally went live action, Audrey Geisel, Dr. Seuss’s widow, set the terms. She asked for $5 million upfront, a share of the box office, and a star of the caliber of Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams, or Jim Carrey. She also had significant control over the script and vetoed some jokes.

Ron Howard directed, and Jim Carrey got the role. Rick Baker designed the makeup, and the Grinch costume used green dyed yak hair sewn onto a spandex suit. Carrey’s makeup took up to two and a half hours a day, and he spent 92 days in it, which he compared to being buried alive. Baker and Gail Rowell Ryan won the Academy Award for Best Makeup.

At the box office, it was a phenomenon. The film opened to $55.1 million, then a record for a film that was not a sequel, and became the highest grossing film of 2000 in the United States, with about $347 million worldwide. Critics were split, and it holds a 50 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Fans did not care. It was the best selling holiday home video of 2001, it airs on television every Christmas, and it returned to theaters for its 25th anniversary in December 2025.

The story may not be over. A June 2026 report said a sequel is in development, with Howard directing and Carrey in talks to return. In December 2024, Carrey said he would only come back if he could use motion capture instead of all that makeup.

The Cat in the Hat (2003): The One That Changed the Rules

Three years later, Universal tried again. The Cat in the Hat was directed by Bo Welch, reportedly his first time directing a feature, and starred Mike Myers as the Cat, with Alec Baldwin, Kelly Preston, Dakota Fanning, and Spencer Breslin. It cost $109 million.

It opened at number one with $38.3 million, but it faded fast and earned about $134 million worldwide. Critics were brutal. It holds a 10 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, picked up eight nominations at the Golden Raspberry Awards, and drew complaints about its adult jokes and potty humor, with Leonard Maltin calling those jokes a betrayal of Seuss. Co star Amy Hill later described the shoot as miserable.

The biggest consequence came from Audrey Geisel. She was dissatisfied with the film, and she stopped live action adaptations of Seuss’s work during her lifetime, which ended a planned sequel based on The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Every Seuss feature since has been animated.

Here is a fun twist. Alec Berg, David Mandel, and Jeff Schaffer, who wrote the 2003 Cat in the Hat, are the same writers named in the June 2026 report on the live action Grinch sequel.

And the film has found a second life online. Welch has since defended it as weird and anarchic, some critics have argued its humor was ahead of its time, and in 2026, a TikTok trend reposted its scenes in black and white with dark humor captions. It is one of the strangest second lives in the Seuss catalog.

Horton Hears a Who! (2008): The Animated Era Begins

With live action off the table, Seuss went animated. Horton Hears a Who!, from Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox Animation, premiered in March 2008. Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino directed, and the voice cast included Jim Carrey as Horton, Steve Carell as the Mayor of Whoville, and Carol Burnett as the Sour Kangaroo. Audrey Geisel was an executive producer and gave the team access to her husband’s archives.

It was the first Seuss adaptation fully animated with CGI, and it worked. It opened at number one with $45 million, earned about $299 million worldwide on an $85 million budget, and holds a 79 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the highest of the modern Seuss films. Critics praised its visuals and how closely it stuck to the book, and audiences gave its message, that a person is a person no matter how small, an A minus on CinemaScore.

Blue Sky did not get to keep the Seuss streak going. The studio was shut down after Disney bought 20th Century Fox, and as we covered in The Curious Disappearance of Ice Age, Chris Meledandri, who had been vital to Blue Sky’s early years, left to found Illumination. That is the studio that made the next two Seuss movies.

The Lorax (2012): Big Box Office, Bigger Debate

Illumination took its turn next. The Lorax, directed by Chris Renaud, opened on March 2, 2012, with Danny DeVito as the Lorax, Ed Helms as the businessman who chops down the Truffula Trees, and Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, and Betty White in supporting roles. It opened to $70.2 million, Illumination’s biggest debut at the time and the best opening for any Seuss adaptation, and earned about $351 million worldwide on a $70 million budget.

The reviews were split, with a 53 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences gave it an A on CinemaScore. The bigger controversy was marketing. The film had more than 70 product partnerships, and Mazda used its characters to sell the CX5 SUV, which some saw as clashing with a book about pollution. Universal defended the deal, and after a fourth grade class in Brookline, Massachusetts, ran a successful petition, the studio added an environmental message to the film’s website.

The Lorax also became a meme favorite, with its scene of the Lorax leaving turning into a TikTok favorite, and its businessman character building a big following on Tumblr. Its message still holds up, which is why we included it in our guide to the best Earth Day movies to watch.

The Grinch (2018): The Biggest Seuss Movie Ever

Illumination went back to Whoville for The Grinch, directed by Scott Mosier and Yarrow Cheney. Benedict Cumberbatch voiced the Grinch in an American accent to match the rest of the cast, and Pharrell Williams narrated.

It opened to $67.6 million, beating the 2000 film’s holiday opening record, and went on to earn about $515 million worldwide on a $75 million budget. That made it the highest grossing Christmas film ever and the most successful Dr. Seuss adaptation of all time. Critics were lukewarm, with a 60 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but families gave it an A minus on CinemaScore.

It was also the last Seuss movie released in Audrey Geisel’s lifetime. She was an executive producer on the film and died on December 19, 2018, five weeks after it opened.

What the Seuss Track Record Tells Us

Look at the numbers together, and a few patterns stand out.

The Grinch is the franchise’s superpower. The two Grinch films are the two biggest Seuss movies at the domestic box office, and the 1966 special is still the version critics love most. A Christmas story with a built in rewatch season is hard to beat.

Animation has been the safer bet. The two live action films earned 50 and 10 percent ratings from critics, while the three animated films landed between 53 and 79 percent. Each of the three earlier animated films also made more than twice its budget worldwide.

Stretching a picture book to feature length is the hardest part. Critics of The Lorax said Hollywood formula diluted the book, and some critics of the new Cat in the Hat say its story feels overcrowded or too long for a book that fits in a few minutes of reading.

And fans do not always agree with critics. As we pointed out in our look at children’s books turned TV shows or films, the 2000 Grinch, the 2003 Cat in the Hat, and The Lorax all still float around the internet. The 2000 Grinch has a 50 percent rating and is still a holiday tradition. The Lorax drew mixed reviews and became a meme machine. Even the 2003 Cat in the Hat, the film that got live action Seuss shut down, has found an audience that loves it for how strange it is.

That is the challenge for the new Cat in the Hat. It does not need to be a holiday giant like the Grinch. It needs to give families a reason to come back, and give Warner Bros. a reason to build the rest of its Seussiverse.

Which Dr. Seuss movie is your favorite, and are you giving the new Cat in the Hat a shot? Let us know in the comments.