The Cat in the Hat script, with Chris Meledandri as producer, and Audrey Geisel as the executive producer. However, the project never came to fruition. On January 24, 2018, it was announced that Warner Animation Group was in development of a different animated "Cat in the Hat" film as part of a creative partnership with Seuss Enterprises. In 2009, the Royal National Theatre created a stage version of the book, adapted and directed by Katie Mitchell. "Seussical", a musical adaptation that incorporates aspects of many Dr. Seuss works, features the Cat in the Hat as narrator. The musical received weak reviews when it opened, in
The Cat in the Hat "small, stooped woman wearing 'a leather half-glove and a secret smile'". Anita Silvey, recounting a similar story, described the woman as "a very elegant, very petite African-American woman named Annie Williams". Geisel told Silvey that, when he sketched the Cat in the Hat, he thought of Williams and gave the character Williams' white gloves and "sly, even foxy smile". Geisel gave two conflicting, partly fictionalized accounts of the book's creation in two articles, "How Orlo Got His Book" in "The New York Times Book Review" and "My Hassle with the First Grade Language" in the "Chicago Tribune", both published on