The Cat in the Hat been adapted for various media, including theater, television, and film. The animated musical TV special premiered in 1971 and starred Allan Sherman as the Cat. In 2003, a live-action film adaptation was released, starring Mike Myers as the Cat. Boxoffice.com reports that the film grossed $133,960,541 worldwide on an estimated $109 million budget. In 2012, following the financial success of "The Lorax", the animated film adaptation of the Dr. Seuss book of the same name, Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment announced plans to produce a CGI adaptation of "The Cat in the Hat". Rob Lieber was set to write the
The Cat in the Hat education division at Houghton Mifflin. However, because Geisel was already under contract with Random House, the two publishers agreed to a deal: Houghton Mifflin published the education edition, which was sold to schools, and Random House published the trade edition, which was sold in bookstores. Geisel gave varying accounts of how he created "The Cat in the Hat", but in the version he told most often he was so frustrated with the word list from which he could choose words to write his story that he decided to scan the list and create a story based on the first two