Bill Damaschke, the head of Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, a new division of the company (now under the overarching Skydance umbrella) that looks to develop original ideas alongside its deep bench of legacy IP, dug through some paperwork recently. He wanted to figure out when the deal between Warner Bros. and Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which controls the rights to author Theodor Geisel’s vast library, was signed. It was November 2, 2017.
“This movie has been in conversation at Warner Bros. for nine years, through multiple regime changes and against all odds. The fact that we have a movie coming out this week is a small miracle,” Damaschke said.
And he’s right. “The Cat in the Hat,” the first film from Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, has had a long journey to the big screen, full of the usual twists and turns, which seems appropriate for the lopsided world of Dr. Seuss.
“The Cat in the Hat” sees the Cat (Bill Hader), now reimagined as an employee of a whimsical corporation (Institute for the Institution of Imagination and Inspiration, LLC) in its own universe, who is sent on a nearly impossible mission – to cheer up some very glum children (voiced by Xochitl Gomez and Tiago Martinez). The movie mixes hallmarks of the original Seuss story (Matt Berry voices Waffles, the kids’ pet fish) with all new elements, like them traveling into moving boxes full of memories and fantasies.
One of the first people on the project was Erica Rivinoja, an Oscar-nominated writer whose animation credits include “South Park,” “Trolls” and “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” It was a previous Warner Bros. animation regime who thought she would be great as the director of “The Cat in the Hat.” It was Rivinoja, together with Jared Stern, that came up with the moving boxes being a place where the Cat and the kids could dive into. “The spine of the story has remained the same,” Rivinoja said.
She was eventually joined by Alessandro Carloni, a legendary story artist and director who Damaschke had worked with at DreamWorks Animation and Skydance Animation. Together, Rivinoja and Carloni would write and direct “The Cat in the Hat.”
“He’s much better at story and plot and all of the things that you’re supposed to know as a licensed writer than I am. But he really helped figure out a lot of the moves for us,” said Rivinoja.
“The story hasn’t actually changed that much from what was here when I arrived. The execution has changed massively, and the target became much clearer,” said Damaschke. “We set a bar that was, I think, higher than maybe where the studio was aiming when I when I first got here. I kept saying, Let’s make ‘Fantasia.’ Let’s really reach here.”
Everyone involved with “The Cat in the Hat” stresses that Dr. Seuss Enterprises were fantastic partners, never limiting what they wanted to come up with or how they wanted to transform the beloved story. But that’s still a daunting proposition – a story first published in 1957 that, in the decades since, has been read and re-read by countless children.
“Our job wasn’t necessarily to reinvent the Cat, but was to expand him and discover much bigger truth about him – what he does, who he really is, what he really stands for – and we were excited about the realization, telling the audience that basically the Cat is not just a clown or a buffoon that comes in to make you laugh, but it turns out he’s a brilliant child psychologist that is able to give kids exactly what they need at a moment of need in their life,” explained Carloni. “That was just an expansion of the character, as opposed to a reinvention. And the other thing that I think we got really excited about is that we expanded very much the Things, as opposed to One and Two, and to break that canon … I thought it was going to be scary thing for the Enterprise, and yet they were very supportive and very encouraging.”
“We wanted to ask ourselves the why. Why did the ‘Cat in the Hat’ book happen? Why did he go there on that rainy day? Why is he wearing this red and white striped hat?” said Rivinoja. “Just explaining all of that, and so I think that’s why it all feels organic.”
At one point, Dr. Seuss Enterprises pushed back on Mr. Hoogeboom, the Cat’s boss, voiced by Giancarlo Esposito and named for a member of the “Cat in the Hat” crew. They didn’t like the idea that he was flat – almost two-dimensional, and told the filmmakers, “That’s not really a Seussian thing.” Eventually, though, they saw the comedy in the idea (“a character who is like a pancake,” as Rivinoja said) and gave them the go-ahead.
“They were always very open to our ideas, which was awesome,” Rivinoja said.
Of course, beyond Rivinoja and Carloni, the third big creative member of the team was Hader, who produced the movie alongside providing the voice of the Cat.
Hader had worked alongside Rivinoja 15 years ago and had already played the character once, more than 10 years earlier, in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that aired as part of the show’s 40th season, back in 2014.
Hader said that he was first contacted by Rivinoja but he knew Carloni from working on a movie that was never finished, an ambitious DreamWorks Animation feature called “Me and My Shadow.”
“It was this great thing where I was like, Oh my god, these two people are working with each other. It was kind of a no-brainer. They just showed me all the stuff they had for it and then that was that. I said yes in the room. I don’t even think they fully pitched it to me. I was like ‘Yes, I’ll do this. You can pitch me the story if you want, but I’m going to do it,’” Hader explained.
“The Cat in the Hat,” he said, was the first book he ever remembered owning. “It was very fun and important to me,” said Hader.
“He brought Bill Hader to it,” said Rivinoja. And you know exactly what she means.
Damaschke describes the energy that Hader brought to the project as “unhinged positive anarchy.”
“Bill is a brilliant dramatic actor. He’s one of the funniest comedians we’ve ever ever had and wanted to create something really unique,” he said. “We wanted to find a character and use all of his many gifts to get there.”
At the premiere for the movie, Hader embraced Carloni and told him, “Finally, we got to finish a movie together.”
Embracing Damaschke’s “Fantasia” analogy, the filmmakers worked with animation studio DNEG to create the outlandish world for the movie. Or should we say worlds.
“The book is based on a Seussian character entering the real world as opposed to staying in their own version. We figured, Why work hard to make a look of picture when you can work three times as hard and make three looks of pictures?” Carloni said. The “Seuss world” where the Cat is employed is one look, the real world is another look and then “the magical journey they undertake inside the moving boxes is yet another look.” “That was truly challenging,” said Carloni.
But all the artists were up to the challenge. Once the story was more or less locked in, the movie only took two-and-a-half years to get through production, which is basically lightning speed for an animated feature. It meant a lot of overtime – they called Saturdays “Caturdays,” – but they got there eventually, with a movie worthy of being the first feature from the new animation studio.
“It’s a big honor to be the first big film out of this because they’re really going all out and they’re so supportive. They’re putting everything behind us,” said Rivinoja. “It shows that they believe in the film, which is a huge honor to us. And we’re really happy.”
“The Cat in the Hat” will have an accompanying “Looney Tunes” short film, the excellent “Daffy Season,” attached to it as well, marking the first time a theatrical “Looney Tunes” short has been exhibited in nearly 15 years.
“I think they actually represent the vision that we have right now, which is that we’re going to bring beloved takes on some of our classic characters, as well as introduce new characters. Some of them will be brand new. Some of them will be characters that you may know from another medium that we’re working with. But ultimately, we want to not have any one house style or any one look to the films,” said Damaschke.
Damaschke remembered when he first started the job at Warner Bros. He was driving on Olive, around the corner by the theater, and there was a giant billboard celebrating 85 years of “Looney Tunes” and long history that Warner Bros. has had with animation. The billboard was festooned with “all the amazing characters that the studio has worked on and nurtured over these many years.”
“I thought, Okay, my job is to make sure we create things that can live among those things and earn their place up there on that wall with Fred and Barney and Bugs and Daffy and Batman,” Damaschke said. He started to think about “The Cat in the Hat” and all of the characters – the Cat, Waffles, the Things – “characters that are part of the DNA of the Dr. Seuss story reimagined by Warner Bros. Pictures Animation in the hands of these brilliant filmmakers.” He figured, If we get it right, they can live on that billboard with all those other amazing characters.
They definitely can.
It’s worth mentioning that “The Cat in the Hat” is the first film in a three-picture deal with Warner Bros. “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!,” a colorful musical directed by Jon M. Chu and Jill Culton and starring Ariana Grande and Josh Gad, arrives in theaters in 2028, with songs from the songwriting duo of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. As for the third film in the Warner Bros./Seuss deal, well, nobody is saying. But if “The Cat in the Hat” meets expectations, there could be another adventure for this frisky feline.
“We’re hoping there might be a Cat in it,” Rivinoja teased.
We’ll have our hat ready.
“The Cat in the Hat” is in theaters now.
The post Thing 1: How ‘The Cat in the Hat’ Became Warner Bros. Pictures Animation’s First Movie appeared first on TheWrap.
