Warner Bros. Pictures Animation Put The Cat In The Hat On A November Friday

First feature under the relaunched banner. Bill Hader as the Cat. November 6, 2026 in North America. International from November 4. IMAX. DNEG. Dr. Seuss, 1957, stretched into an assignment with a hat on the line.

Warner Bros. Pictures lists The Cat in the Hat as only in theaters, November 2026. The official film site, catinthehatfilm.com, tightens that to November 6 in North America, IMAX included, and an international start from November 4. Warner Bros. Pictures Animation calls it the banner’s first full-length feature. Bill Damaschke is president and chief creative officer of that label. The book is Dr. Seuss, published 12 March 1957. The 2003 live-action film already exists. This one is drawn.

The logline on the studio page is not the book’s two children and a rainy afternoon. The Cat, voiced by Bill Hader, works for the I.I.I.I., the Institute for the Institution of Imagination and Inspiration, LLC. The assignment is Gabby and Sebastian, siblings after a move to a new town. Known for taking things too far, this may be his last chance to keep the stripes on the hat. Official copy: mischief, magic, mayhem. Meet the Cat you don’t know.

Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja write and direct. Story by Caroline Williams. Produced by Daniela Mazzucato and Jared Stern. Executive producers include Hader, Susan Brandt of Dr. Seuss Enterprises, Damaschke, Kelly Marcel, Steve Zissis, Tim Story, Alex Timbers. Animation by DNEG. Music by Lorne Balfe. Edited by Dan Molina.

Illumination announced an animated Cat after The Lorax and did not finish it. Warner Bros. took the rights in January 2018. Rivinoja and Art Hernandez were attached in October 2020. Carloni replaced Hernandez in June 2023. Cast headlines landed in March 2024, with more names in 2025. The date moved from 27 February 2026 to 6 November 2026 so the first film of a relaunched animation label could sit in a holiday corridor. That is the studio’s stated reason: runway, families, merchandising season.

The Cat in the Hat surrounded by the Things

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The 1957 book is short, rhymed, and contained. Mother out. Two children. A cat who should not be in the house. Thing One and Thing Two. A fish who objects. A mess, then a clean-up before the adult returns. Mike Myers walked through a live-action version in 2003 that the culture filed under excess. The 2026 film keeps the hat, the bow tie, the long body, and builds a workplace around them.

I.I.I.I. is the joke and the plot engine. An institute with a limited-liability tag. Hader’s Cat is an agent who cheers “happyless” kids, in DNEG’s phrase, and who has exhausted a boss’s patience. Giancarlo Esposito voices Mr. Hoogeboom, that boss. Quinta Brunson is Sherri, HR at the same office. The assignment is not a random rainy day. It is a case file: Gabby, voiced by Xochitl Gomez, older sister standing in for Sally. Sebastian, voiced by Tiago Martinez, the younger brother. They have moved. The Cat has one more chance. The hat is the stake.

Matt Berry is the Fish, given speech and motion out of the bowl by the Cat, still the objector. America Ferrera is the mother. Thomas Middleditch is listed as Thing One. Bowen Yang, Tituss Burgess, Paula Pell fill the wider company. Additional voices on credits boards include Wilmer Valderrama, Jay Pharoah, Ralph Garman, Roxana Ortega, America Young, Daniel Middleton, Robin Åkerstrand as Sven. Not every name has a printed character card yet. The ones that do map onto book roles plus an office the book never had.

That office is how a 61-page primer becomes a feature. Official lang calls it an epic adventure with an edge as also calls it family and comedy. Both can be true on a poster. What the trailers show is a Cat who drives a red sofa like a car, leans on brownstone stairs in a bow tie, and stands in blue fur that is not the book’s spare line work. DNEG’s job is to keep Seuss readable while filling the hours a book does not have.

The book’s moral is containment: fun, then order before Mother. The film’s moral, as written on the site, is employment: prove yourself or lose the hat. One is a rainy indoor rule. The other is a show review. November is when that review goes public

The Cat in the Hat driving a car with a red interior

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Hader’s Cat is his first animated feature lead. He also executive produces. The voice is the selling line because the face on the poster is drawn. Gomez comes from live-action Marvel work into a Seuss sister who has to carry the move. Martinez, less widely billed, is the brother the assignment is built around. Berry’s Fish is the inherited objection, now mobile. Brunson’s HR director is the new joke: chaos with a compliance officer.

Esposito as the exasperated boss is the other new joke. The Cat has always been too much. Putting that too-muchness on a payroll gives Esposito a tone the book never needed. Ferrera as Mother closes the household. Pell, Yang, Burgess are the texture names: comedy people in a film that has to play to children and to the adults who buy the tickets.

Carloni’s prior animation credits include work on Kung Fu Panda 3 as a director. Rivinoja’s feature directing debut is this film. A Stern Talking To is among the production companies listed with Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and Dr. Seuss Enterprises. DNEG Animation director Jackie Tarascio and a VFX stack under Matthew Waters sit on the vendor card. Aidan Sugano is production designer. Kristy Carlson casts.

Lorne Balfe scores. One credits board also lists songs associated with Hilary Duff. Treat that as a music-department line until a soundtrack one-sheet is the source. The picture still belongs to Balfe’s name on the official site.

Annecy in June 2026 gave Damaschke a stage for the slate. The Cat in the Hat was the first theatrical feature of the new era. Daffy Season, a Looney Tunes short, premiered there the same week. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is further out, March 17, 2028, Jon M. Chu and Jill Culton, Ariana Grande and Josh Gad, ILM. The Cat is the door the label walks through first.

The Cat in the Hat movie title logo on a blue background

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February 27, 2026 was the first locked date. The shift to November 6 was announced as strategy, not as a rescue. Holiday corridor. Longer play. Kids available. Global day-and-date habit. Merchandise season. Those are the words the studio used. A February family animation can work. A November family animation sits next to gift calendars. The first film of a relaunched division wants that calendar.

North America: November 6, theaters and IMAX. International: from November 4, per the official site and trailer notes. The user slate that still reads “November 2026 (TBA)” is the older line. The TBA is gone on Warner’s own movie page once you click through from month to day.

Distribution is Warner Bros. Pictures worldwide. Genre tags: animation, comedy, family. Trailers are numbered on the studio page: official trailer, official trailer 3. The tagline on the teal key art: The Cat’s out of the bag. Only in theaters November 2026. Hashtag TheCatInTheHat.

The 2003 film is the comparison the new one cannot escape and the one it is designed not to repeat. Live action, Myers, a house that felt like a set under pressure. 2026 is CG, Hader, an institute, a move to a new town, a hat that can be taken away. Same stripes. Different employer.

Seuss’s page is still the source of the form. Red and white hat. Bow tie. White gloves. Long limbs. The trailers add a steering wheel on a sofa, a brownstone stoop, a press of blue Things. That is how a short book becomes two hours without pretending the book had two hours in it.

November 6 is the Friday. November 4 is the international start. The banner’s first feature is a cat on a performance plan. The book remains 1957. The LLC is 2026.