Bill Hader got trolled by own kids over ‘Cat in the Hat’

Bill Hader’s kids keep him humble.

During Tuesday’s Warner Bros. presentation at CinemaCon 2025, the Saturday Night Live star appeared to uproarious applause when it was time to tease the studio’s new Cat in the Hat film. After showing a work-in-progress trailer, Hader joked that the announcement he’ll star as Dr. Seuss’s favorite fancy feline went over well with… most of his kids.

While his two eldest daughters with ex-wife Maggie Carey — Hannah Kathryn and Harper — were thrilled, his youngest, Hayley Clementine, wasn’t too impressed. “Well, I will say, I have three daughters, and I’ve been reading it to them, and then my parents read it to me,” Hader told the crowd. “And so I remember when I, you know, got the call about this, and I went into my kids, and I was like, ‘Hey, what do you guys think about the Cat in the Hat?’ And two of them were stoked. And the youngest one was like, ‘Boo!… Ryan Gosling! Boo! Boo!'” (Apparently, she was hoping to infuse the cast with some Kenergy rather than Hader’s unique brand of humor.)

Described as the “doorway into our own Seussiverse” by Warner Bros. Animation head Bill Damaschke, the work-in-progress trailer depicted Hader’s titular Cat as wanted for a crime he didn’t commit. The true culprit, a rambunctious zebra, tears through the screen and plunges a normal suburban home into tumult with the help of some other animals and a stash of fireworks.

Along the road, Hader’s Cat meets a Giraffe with a Carafe and a Pig in a Wig and fights to hang on to his hat against the challenge of a tough new job.

On stage, Damaschke said of the movie, “We all know the cat cheers up and brings joy to kids on rainy days. In our film, he will get his toughest assignment yet and have to up his game to keep that hat. It expands the story way beyond the book.”

Hader said that he’d been chasing the film for years and even put himself on tape for consideration. A bit of a 2014 SNL sketch in which Hader portrayed the Dr. Seuss character was played for the crowd. In the sketch, Hader bursts into a living room to delight some kids played by Aidy Bryant and Cecily Strong, the latter of whom was once romantically involved with him.

A new Cat in the Hat movie from Warner Bros. and Dr. Seuss Enterprises was first announced in 2018. The last feature adaptation of this particular Seuss character came in 2003, with Mike Myers as the be-hatted beast and co-starring Alec Baldwin, Dakota Fanning, Sean Hayes, and more.

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Hader will appear in the film alongside America Ferrera, Bowen Yang, and Matt Berry. Cat in the Hat will hit theaters in February 2026.

With additional reporting by Lauren Huff.