Warner Bros. Pictures Animation released the main trailer for The Cat in the Hat on Thursday, offering the fullest look yet at Bill Hader’s turn as the most famously disruptive houseguest in children’s literature. The two and a half minute spot arrived on the studio’s official YouTube channel just under two months before the film opens, and it makes clear that this version has ambitions well beyond the tidy living room of the 1957 Dr. Seuss picture book.
The trailer reframes the Cat as a working professional with a boss and a performance record. He is an operative of the Institute for the Institution of Imagination and Inspiration, an agency that assigns him to raise the spirits of two siblings, Gabby and Sebastian, who are having a hard time settling in after their family moves. The Cat has a well established habit of taking things too far, and when the magical hat that powers his work goes missing, the three of them set off into a land of memories to track it down. The stakes are personal, since failing the assignment could cost him the hat for good.
Visually the footage travels through several distinct worlds, with the illustration style growing wilder the deeper the journey goes, and it leans into the elastic, rhyme friendly anarchy that has always made the character work on the page. The trip into the land of memories also gives the film a warmer thread than the premise alone might suggest, tying the Cat’s mischief to what Gabby and Sebastian are actually missing about the home they left.
Hader leads a deep voice ensemble. Xochitl Gomez voices Gabby and Tiago Martinez voices Sebastian, with America Ferrera as their mother and Matt Berry as the Fish, the perpetually alarmed voice of reason. Quinta Brunson voices Sherri, and the cast also includes Bowen Yang, Giancarlo Esposito, Tituss Burgess, Paula Pell and Robin Åkerstrand.
Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja direct from a screenplay they wrote together, with Daniela Mazzucato and Jared Stern producing. Lorne Balfe composed the score and Dan Molina edited, while DNEG Animation handled the animation production. The film is being made in partnership with Dr. Seuss Enterprises.
The project carries particular weight for its studio as the first full length feature from the relaunched Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, the label led by president Bill Damaschke. The division used this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June to lay out an expanded slate, and a work in progress presentation of this film drew a warm response there. The release date has shifted along the way, moving from late February 2026 to its current November slot, which places it in the heart of the holiday family moviegoing season.
The Cat in the Hat opens in theaters and IMAX in North America on November 6, with the international rollout beginning November 4.