Warner Bros.'s 'The Cat In The Hat' Animated Feature Will Hit Theaters On March 6, 2026
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Warner Bros.'s 'The Cat In The Hat' Animated Feature Will Hit Theaters On March 6, 2026
Warner Bros. Pictures Animation (WBPA) has shared details regarding its upcoming animated feature adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, scheduled to hit theaters on March 6, 2026. The film is being written and directed by Alessandro Carloni (director, Kung Fu Panda 3) and Erica Rivinoja (writer, Trolls, Cloudy with a Chance of […]
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Shield Rebrand
With Annecy right around the corner, and with a new leader at the helm... Warner Animation Grou- Sorry, **Warner Bros. Pictures Animation**... Has announced a morsel of their big rebrand following nearly a decade of having "Warner Animation Group" as their prime feature animation moniker...
Recap: Former DreamWorks powerhosue exec Bill Damaschke, who was a key figure at the studio from the late 1990s all the way up until the mid-2010s... Ya know, the era of MADAGASCAR, OVER THE HEDGE, KUNG FU PANDA, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, THE CROODS, etc.... now runs Warner Bros. Pictures Animation. Or to save digital ink on this somewhat mouthful name, WBPA...
Their previously-released picture was DC LEAGUE OF SUPER-PETS this past summer, a pretty commercially successful comics-based romp that's sure to get some kind of continuation. We would've had *another* WAG/WBPA movie this past year, too, with SCOOB! HOLIDAY HAUNT. Conceived as a straight to Max (formerly HBO Max) prequel, that movie was completed and scored... But Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav - in one of many bad moves - cast it into the black hole, a "tax write-off" that can never be released and no one can legally make any money off of it...
This year, at one point, would've had the hybrid Looney Tunes movie COYOTE VS. ACME, and next year once had a WIZARD OF OZ retelling called TOTO.
Curiously, the new report on Deadline says that COYOTE VS. ACME is still in the works, as the live-action portions were all filmed a while ago. (Not that that means anything, keep in mind that Zaslav took a nearly-completed BATGIRL that was entirely filmed... And also threw that into a black hole, I think all traces of its existence have been deleted.) If finished and released, as it's still without a concrete release date, then COYOTE VS. ACME could possibly be the first WAG movie to be billed as a WBPA movie. The rebrand could be effective immediately, maybe not... If it is, then WAG's last picture would be a dog movie. Quite something.
Speaking of dogs... TOTO wasn't mentioned at all, strongly implying that that film is no longer happening.
And speaking of pet animals... THE CAT AND THE HAT, which was always slated after TOTO, is still coming. It's now aiming for either 2025 or 2026, and has added Alessandro Carloni (KUNG FU PANDA 3) as director alongside Erica Rivinoja. Presumably, the planned THING ONE AND THING TWO and OH THE PLACE YOU'LL GO! movies are still on, as Warner did enter an overall deal back in 2018 to make plenty of Dr. Seuss animated movies. Other than that, no word on the Ron Clements-John Musker picture METAL MEN, of course a DC adaptation... What ever happened to that one? I was pumped to see that Disney dream team make their big return, because it's been a while. MOANA was their previous picture, and presumably final one for Disney Animation...
Damaschke, channeling his DreamWorks days, plans to have WBPA be much more filmmaker-driven and less focused on big IPs the way WAG was for a little while. Relying on Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Hanna-Barbera, DC, et al. All stuff WBD owns, and abandoning pictures like THE ICE DRAGON and BONE... Which, yes, are based on pre-existing source material, but you know what I mean. Not the stuff WB has had in their family free for years and years. I missed it when WAG/WBPA made movies like STORKS and SMALLFOOTS to go with all the LEGO movies and such.
He noted the studio's history of releasing films like THE IRON GIANT, CORPSE BRIDE, and HAPPY FEET. He did erroneously state that THE IRON GIANT was "commercially successful". On video, yes, but we all know that movie - Brad Bird's feature directorial debut - was sadly a crushing bomb at the box office upon its original 1999 release. Still, that he gave that film and some others a nod is important... But, as the Deadline report pointed out... That's a line-up alright! Films directed by Brad Bird, Tim Burton, George Miller. He also added Robert Zemeckis' mo-capped THE POLAR EXPRESS, but surprisingly left out Zack Snyder's GUARDIANS OF GA'HOOLE'S adaptation. (Why they went with that generic mouthful title is beyond me.)
Warner's partnership with Locksmith Animation, the UK-based animation studio founded by ex-Aardman women Julie Lockhart and Sarah Smith, is also still on. Much to my surprise. I thought that affair was over, but no! They're still in the mix, and have two pictures in the works that'll debut after their THAT CHRISTMAS debuts on Netflix. Those are the sci-fi Grimm fairy tale story THE LUNAR CHRONICLES, and a modern musical called BAD FAIRIES. They've got great talent attached (for example, CENTAURWORLD director Megan Nicole Dong is helming BAD FAIRIES), and they both sound like fun... And I wanted to see more of Locksmith anyways, they made a neat little start with the charming RON'S GONE WRONG. Always nice to see a relatively new studio make it.
Still, this initial announcement was much more focused on... IPs. Locksmith is also said to have a hand in the IP movies in addition to the original productions...
In the works is a Flintstones origin movie called MEET THE FLINTSTONES, to be written by MARIO's Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, who previously did lots of work on Warners' own TEEN TITANS GO! Presumably, this won't be starting any Hanna-Barbera "Cinematic Universe" that SCOOB! attempted to do. The whole world of Hanna-Barbera was already a shared universe anyways, for they've had many crossovers over the decades: FLINTSTONES MEET THE JETSONS, for starters. JOHNNY BRAVO had that whole Scooby-Doo episode which threw then-6 year old me for a curveball. The loose nature of many of their most-beloved cartoons allows for that. Yogi Bear can just suddenly show up in, like, a Scooby-Doo cartoon or something. It doesn't have to be this MCU-esque thing, and oddly enough, the much-maligned SCOOB! kinda knew that. The 2020 movie wasn't necessarily setting up future movies or tying everything down to some S.H.I.E.L.D.-esque connective tissue... The characters from other Hanna-Barbera shows simply existed in the same universe as the Scooby-Doo characters. They were simply going to solve more mysteries as the Mystery Gang after the plot wrapped up. I loved the idea of them having to face Dick Dastardly, and also meeting faces like Captain Caveman... The execution, I felt, just didn't service the world that they shaped. To me, SCOOB! played out much more like a generic animated movie that just happened to be set in the H-B universe. I felt it could've been a lot better. I'm not sure if the scrapped version that was aiming for a 2018 release, the one that involved Dax Shepard, was going to be any better. That too could've been a cluttered cameo cacophony. First and foremost, I'd like to see this Flintstones movie just be a really cool adaptation of the titular family. Maybe, in a sort of post-SPIDER-VERSE sense, they use a really cool style of CGI that really brings Bedrock to life in a way not seen in the previous live-action movie iterations. SCOOB!, to be fair, had a really fun-looking style that meshed the classic designs and cartooniness of the source material with 3D quite nicely. But, one movie at a time please. Maybe it should just be, simply, a Flintstones movie.
Another live-action/animation hybrid Looney Tunes movie is in the works, too, apparently... Although part of me just wishes to see... Simply... An all-animated Looney Tunes movie. It doesn't even need to be an ensemble movie, since many of the original Looney Tunes theatrical shorts (in addition to the Merrie Melodies) weren't ensemble cartoons... But for whatever reason, Warner just won't do it. SPACE JAM really did set the template going forward... I can't complain too much. What's going on with the Warner Bros. Animation-produced Looney Tunes movies like THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP? They seem to still be alive in some way or another.
I also don't rule out, now that ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE is out and surpassing its predecessor at the box office in a matter of days, hours even- An animated Batman theatrical feature. Or something set in the DC Universe that isn't LEAGUE OF SUPER-PETS. There are already some animation plans underway for James Gunn and Peter Safran's rebooted DC Universe, so... We shall see...
Obviously, I'm much more interested in the non-IP stuff they plan on putting into development... So, I'm assuming during Annecy next week, they'll shed some more light on that... I'm just glad to hear that WBPA is in good standing and they have a new game plan going forward...
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