The Cat in the Hat Box Office: $1 Million in Previews, a $20 Million Opening Projected on a $92 Million Budget, 48% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Why I Think the Slide From $40 Million Is the Real Story

Warner Bros. opened The Cat in the Hat on Friday, Nov. 6, in 4,003 North American theaters, and the first number out of the gate was small: $1 million in Thursday previews. That is not a disaster by itself. Family movies are built for Saturday morning, not Thursday night. But the number lands in a week when the forecast for this movie has been sliding for a month, and that slide is the part I can’t stop thinking about.

I haven’t seen the movie, and I’m not going to pretend I have. What follows is built from the trade reports, the early reviews and the box office math, all linked at the bottom. The facts are sourced. The arithmetic is mine and labeled. My opinions say they’re opinions.

The Cat in the Hat box office: $1 million in previews, and what the trades are projecting

The Hollywood Reporter says Warner Bros. is releasing the film in more than 4,000 locations, with the studio projecting an opening around $20 million. Deadline’s Friday report is a little more cautious, with a three-day range of $17 million to $20 million and a $5 million Friday that includes those previews. Variety has it landing in second place, behind Godzilla Minus Zero, which is tracking around $30 million.

One more detail that matters for the long game: THR reports Warner Bros. is counting on word of mouth to carry the film through Thanksgiving and into December. That’s the right plan for a family movie. It’s also the plan studios announce when the opening weekend isn’t going to do the talking.

Why the forecast fell from $40 million to $20 million

Here’s the chart I wish more box office stories included. These aren’t results. They’re projections published at different moments, so read them as a mood, not a ledger.

I think this is the real warning sign, and it’s bigger than any single review. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that early interest in the trailers didn’t turn into plans to buy tickets, and the reviews that arrived this week didn’t help. The reports don’t say why the numbers fell, only that they did.

What a 48% Rotten Tomatoes score really tells you about a PG movie

On Friday evening the Tomatometer stood at 48% from 48 reviews, with 23 fresh and 25 rotten, according to Toonado’s tally. Deadline had it at 48% too, and THR had 49%. Metacritic was at 47. That is a split, not a pile-on. The score for the 2003 live-action version, for comparison, was around 10% to 11%.

The reviews I read say roughly the same thing. THR critic Frank Scheck called it “more taxing than enjoyable.” ScreenRant gave it 5 out of 10, and the review splits the same way: Bill Hader’s Cat is the best version of the character yet, and some jokes land for adults too, but the plot is a jumble. The film tries to be a Seuss story, a family drama and a chase with a villain at once, and the ending asks you to just trust that it all worked out.

Here’s my honest read. A 48% is not a death sentence for a family film. Parents shopping for a Saturday afternoon mostly want to know whether their kids will sit still for 91 minutes. But it does remove the safety net. Without a critical push, this movie needs the kids to love it so loudly that other parents hear about it.

The 2003 ghost: why this Cat was always going to be measured against Mike Myers

The last big attempt was Universal’s 2003 live-action version with Mike Myers. THR reports it opened to $38.3 million, finished around $101 million in North America and cost $109 million to make. It was widely panned, and Comic Basics notes it also pushed the Seuss estate toward animation for future films.

So the bar looks low: beat a movie critics hated. But look at the opening. A projected $20 million today sits well under that 2003 opening, and tickets cost more now, so the gap in people actually showing up is wider than the dollars suggest. That’s my reasoning, not a reported figure, but I think it’s fair. Variety also points out that 2018’s The Grinch opened to $67 million. Seuss on the big screen has had a much bigger ceiling than this.

What a $20 million opening could turn into against a $92 million budget

I’m not going to pretend I know Warner Bros.’ break-even number. Theaters keep a share of every ticket, marketing costs are separate from the budget, and nobody outside the studio has the full picture. What I can do is show simple arithmetic. These are not forecasts. They multiply a $20 million opening by three different multipliers I picked, to show how much the legs matter.

The international rollout matters here, because the film is only just starting overseas. But all three domestic outcomes sit under the budget, and that’s why the opening weekend carries so much weight. An opening in the $40 million range would have changed this math completely.

Is The Cat in the Hat worth taking your kids to?

I haven’t seen it, so this is a read of the reviews, not a screening report. Here’s what the critics I read suggest:

• Likely fine for kids. ScreenRant’s reviewer, who admits the movie has problems, says kids will likely love it and describes the animation style as delightful.
• A real villain. The film adds a bad guy chasing the Cat, which the same review describes as terrifying. Younger kids may need a hand to hold.
• Jokes with an edge. One gag drew an “Oh, my God” from the reviewer for taking a mature turn, so parents may catch a couple of lines the kids don’t.
• It’s short. About 91 minutes, which is a mercy.

My pick: if your kids are somewhere around five to nine and already know the book, it’s a reasonable matinee. If you’re deciding between this and the other family options coming up, the film from Disney, Hexed, arrives Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving. Waiting a few weeks for streaming costs you nothing.

My take: the movie is a coin flip, and the plan is the problem

Here’s the part I feel strongly about. Warner Bros. is calling this the first film in a planned Dr. Seuss animated universe, according to Comic Basics. That’s a big promise to build on a movie that’s splitting critics and opening at half the early forecasts. A Seuss universe only works if the first film makes people want a second one. Right now the studio has a good voice performance and a story that, by several accounts, doesn’t hold together.

I’m not saying the Cat is doomed. Kids don’t read Tomatometers. If the weekend holds up and the audience score is warm, this could still find its legs. At the same time, IndieWire describes Warner Bros. as a studio that could use a hit, and with Paramount’s roughly $111 billion takeover cleared by a judge, a $92 million miss is the kind of thing that gets noticed. That’s my read, not something either outlet reports.

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