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along with the cat in the hatWarner Bros. Pictures Animation captures the chaotic world of Dr. Seuss’ tall, anthropomorphic, evil cat (voiced by Bill Hader) in CG, but in keeping with the author’s graphic style. It takes place after the end of the book and with lots of imaginative surprises.
As an agent of the IIII (Institute of Imagination and Inspiration), Cat always manages to mess things up. But he has one last chance to prove himself to the delight of brothers Gabi (Xochitl Gómez) and Sebastian (Tiago Martinez).
Directors Erika Rivinokha (showrunner Clone High reboot) and Alessandro Carloni (co-director Kung Fu Panda 3) were inspired to discover the truth about Cat, especially about what her job is as perhaps the greatest child psychologist.
“It’s a very small book, but for us the movie was really about: Why did this book happen? Why did this cat show up at the children’s house on this rainy day? Why does he have a red and white hat?” Rivinokha said. “When we started asking these questions and looking for answers, that’s when the idea that this is his job came up. He is one of the different specialists who has entertained more children around the world, and that opened up a whole world for us.”
With the help of production designer Aidan Sugano and story director Ryan Gaffney, they adapted the visual style of Theodor Geisel’s Seussian world to 3D (animated by DNEG). There were three worlds with different appearances: the real world, the Seuss world, and the box world. The first was simple, tactile, rich and naturalistic. The other relied on irreverent whimsy for a modern interpretation with dynamic color, composition and playful surrealism. The third consisted of personality and memoryscapes that conveyed the visual depth of a character’s identity and experience, with a graphic 2D look but expansive 3D depth and space.
“It felt very organic to the story, too, because when we’re in a Seussian world, we really wanted to pay homage to Geisel and her whole style, which is so iconic,” Rivinokha added. So when we’re in Cat’s office, you’ll see a lot of that negative space, those hatch marks, and those certain palettes that Seuss used, and weird arches and staircases. But the story is one of the few where a character from the magical world crosses over into the real world, and so we thought it was a natural transition into that real world.
But going for the overall handmade look was a lot of extra work. The key was to get to a place where the audience was unsure of the technique. “Is it CG? Is it hand drawn? Is it a painted background?” – said Carloni. “Some reporters have asked what it is because they’re not sure what they’re looking at, which is what we were hoping for.”
One of Rivinoja’s favorites was when they entered their mother’s (America Ferrera) moving casket. “Because their impression of mom is that she’s all grown up,” he explained. “She just loves papers and papers. But then, without giving anything away, they reveal who she was growing up and this dimension that they didn’t know about the mother. And I think that’s a great reminder to families that your parents were people before the kids came along, but also a reminder to parents that their kids are full of depth.”
Another aspect was the introduction of Thing One and Thing Two (which is a planned spin-off film) that expanded into more Things. “When we asked Seuss Enterprises that there might be more because they’re such an icon in this world, they were very excited about it,” added Carloni.
“And when we brought up the idea that things actually looked different from one thing to another, and they were open to that, we were just blown away,” he continued. “It just opened up a whole world for us. And we could suddenly have The Things Chaos Beyond Infinity. Our story didn’t change much, but one thing that did change a little bit was the fact that in our test screenings with our peers and the bosses at the studio, people really responded to our Things. They weren’t really meant to be something in the third act that we added. The rest of their story and they had to open the purse strings.”
