The Cat In The Hat comes back as animated feature

Dr. Seuss’ The Cat In The Hat

Oh, the places you’ll go when you’re Dr. Seuss’ “The Cat In The Hat”!

Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures is ready to start devel­op­ing a 3D CG-animated fea­ture based on Dr. Seuss’ immor­tal story The Cat in the Hat. Although no release date has been announced, Rob Lieber has just been named to write the script.

Illu­mi­na­tion Entertainment’s Chris Meledan­dri will pro­duce, while the good doctor’s widow, Audrey Geisel, will be the exec­u­tive producer.

The Cat’s first appear­ance in ani­ma­tion was in the 1971 DePatie-Freleng Enter­prises spe­cial The Cat In The Hat; he resur­faced in 1973’s Dr. Seuss On The Loose, also from DFE. This was fol­lowed by the 1982 spe­cial The Grinch Grinches The Cat In The Hat.

The Cat nar­rated the 1995 TNT spe­cial Daisy-Head Mayzie. And in 2010, Colling­wood O’Hare Enter­tain­ment pro­duced the edu­ca­tional TV series The Cat In The Hat Knows A Lot About That!.

A live-action film about The Cat in the Hat was released by Uni­ver­sal in 2003. Cost­ing about $109 mil­lion to make, it grossed just $101 mil­lion domes­ti­cally and $133 mil­lion world­wide. While a live action Grinch was a big hit for Uni­ver­sal, Meledan­dri and Mrs. Geisel believe that the Cat has more than one life on the big screen.

The Cat and the Hat remains a very pop­u­lar ride in Universal’s Islands of Adven­ture theme park. It was based on Dr. Seuss’s orig­i­nal drawings.

“The feel­ing among Mele­dranadi, Mrs. Geisel, and Uni­ver­sal Films chair­man Adam Fogel­son and co-chairman Donna Lan­g­ley is that Seuss’s works con­nect bet­ter in ani­ma­tion, prompt­ing Universal’s deci­sion to make this the next project,” wrote Mike Flem­ing of Dead­line Hollywood.

When Meledan­dri ran Fox Ani­ma­tion, he and Mrs. Geisel were among the pro­duc­ers of the 2008 ani­mated film Dr. Seuss’ Hor­ton Hears a Who!.

Mean­while, Illu­mi­na­tion is also work­ing on a biopic of Dr. Seuss, with Johnny Depp attached to play him. The con­cept is that this will be a live-action film with ani­ma­tion. Meledan­dri, David Kennedy, and Infini­tum Nihil’s Depp and Christi Dem­browski are the pro­duc­ers, with Mrs. Geisel once again the exec­u­tive pro­ducer. Keith Bunin is the scriptwriter.

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