General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Tom & Jerry

Tom & Jerry is a 2021 American live-action/animated slapstick comedy film directed by Tim Story, in which the cat and mouse Tom and Jerry, characters created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera in 1940, battle in and around an upscale New York City hotel on the eve of a high-society wedding.¹^•² It was produced by Christopher DeFaria, written by Kevin Costello, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, which released it theatrically and on HBO Max on February 26, 2021.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	February 26, 2021, in theaters and on HBO Max (31-day streaming window)²^•³
Director / writer	Tim Story; screenplay by Kevin Costello¹
Cast	Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Peña, Ken Jeong, Rob Delaney, Colin Jost, and Pallavi Sharda²
Box office	$46,536,687 domestic, $90,000,000 international, $136,536,687 worldwide against a $50,000,000 production budget⁴
Critical reception	29% Tomatometer from 130 reviews; 82% Popcornmeter from 1,000+ verified ratings¹
Animation	Framestore was the sole VFX company; director Tim Story called the result "2D-plus" animation³
Rating and runtime	PG for cartoon violence, rude humor, and brief language; 101 minutes⁴

Spoilers

Plot and premise

Jerry Mouse takes refuge in New York City's finest hotel, the Royal Gate, on the eve of "the wedding of the century." The event's desperate planner, hotel employee Kayla (Chloë Grace Moretz), hires Tom Cat to get rid of him before the wedding. Their battle threatens Kayla's career, the wedding, and possibly the hotel itself, while a scheming staffer conspires against all three.¹ The film is set in a world in which all animals are animated and all humans are live action.⁵

The film is an original story, not a sequel to the 1992 animated Tom and Jerry: The Movie.⁶ It uses archive recordings of William Hanna, who performed Tom and Jerry's screeches, yells, gasps, shrieks, howls, and screams in the original cartoons from 1940 to 1958.⁷

Place in the franchise

The characters' first feature-length theatrical film, 1992's Tom and Jerry: The Movie, was a box office failure that alienated fans by having the pair speak constantly and act as friends; the 2021 film returned them to their silent, combative dynamic, though it too drew criticism for how little screen time the rivalry received.¹⁶ The franchise continued afterward with direct-to-video and streaming projects, and a new theatrical feature, Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass (猫和老鼠：星盘奇缘), a Chinese co-production, was released on August 2, 2025, grossing $5,894,913 worldwide.¹⁷

The title is shared by an unrelated 2021 Kannada-language romance film directed by Raaghav Vinay Shivagange, about two people with opposite mindsets who experience life and love in each other's company.¹⁸

Production

Live-action filming was completed before COVID-19 restrictions were put in place, an advantage for the production, since the Hanna-Barbera characters were then brought to life by Framestore animators throughout 2020, much of it after the studio shifted to working from home in January 2020.⁸ Framestore was the sole VFX company on the film, working under animation director Michael Eames.³

"2D-plus" animation. Story and the Framestore team developed what Story called "2D-plus" animation: a CG workflow that achieves the style and feel of classic 2D animation while taking advantage of computer animation's faster production times, combined with visual and practical effects to make each gag seamless.³ The film was finished as a 2K digital intermediate by Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services, with colorist John Daro supervising the grade remotely during pandemic restrictions; director, producer, and editor rotated grade supervision because only two creatives were allowed in the room at a time.⁹^•¹⁰

Filming took place at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, with cinematographer Alan Stewart.¹¹ Warner Bros. released the film under its 2021 plan to debut its entire slate simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max for a one-month U.S. streaming window, a pandemic-era strategy announced in December 2020.¹²

Box office

The film opened domestically on February 26, 2021 in 2,475 theaters, grossing $14,112,629 on opening weekend, 30.3% of its final domestic total.⁴ It finished with $46,536,687 domestically (34.1% of the worldwide total) and $90,000,000 internationally, for $136,536,687 worldwide, about 2.7 times its $50,000,000 production budget.⁴ China was the largest international market at $16,200,000, followed by Australia at $8,300,000 and Russia/CIS at $8,100,000.¹³ Estimated domestic physical disc sales added $10,313,685.⁴

Reception

Critics rated the film poorly while audiences were markedly warmer: Rotten Tomatoes recorded 29% on the Tomatometer from 130 reviews against an 82% Popcornmeter score from more than 1,000 verified ratings.¹ The site's critics consensus said the film is disappointingly short on the anarchic spirit of the classic shorts, while the audience summary called it good fun for kids whose main missing ingredient is more Tom and Jerry.¹

Reviewers repeatedly made the same criticism: the film sidelines its title characters in favor of human plotting. Brian Tallerico, managing editor of RogerEbert.com, wrote that it focuses on a celebrity wedding and hotel staff rather than the physical comedy that made the characters famous.⁵ The Guardian's Benjamin Lee called it a serviceable but forgettable relaunch whose live-action/animation combination often jars, and noted that the animals' signature scraps were never inventive enough.¹⁴ A second Guardian review compared the hybrid approach's debt to Who Framed Roger Rabbit while judging the result closer to Garfield: The Movie.¹⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026