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Cat Burglar is a 2022 adult animated interactive film heist film comedy film short film created by Charlie Brooker and co-written by supervising director Mike Hollingsworth and director James Bowman, with Annabel Jones as an executive producer. The viewer plays as a cartoon cat burglar named Rowdy who is trying to steal a valuable artwork from a museum which is protected by a security guard dog named Peanut. The viewer must answer a series of trivia questions correctly to advance the story and avoid Rowdy losing his three remaining lives. The film pays homage to the works of animator Tex Avery.
The film debuted on Netflix on 22 February 2022 and was made available until 1 December 2024.
It was nominated for two Children's and Family Emmy Awards, including one for Outstanding Interactive Media. The soundtrack, composed by Christopher Willis, won the award for Outstanding Music Direction and Composition for an Animated Program. ‘The Quest,’ ‘Heartstopper,’ ‘Maya and the Three’ among 2022 Children’s & Family Creative Arts Emmy winners - AwardsWatch
Cat Burglar was the first production by Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones's production company Broke and Bones since it was acquired by Netflix. The pair were previously involved in interactive fiction in the 2018 special , part of the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. Though a fan of the genre, Brooker had not previously worked in animation. Mike Hollingsworth served as Supervising Director. It was inspired by the animated shorts made by Tex Avery for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Hollingsworth was a fan and named his child "Avery" after the "King of Cartoons", while Brooker liked the "timeless, surreal anarchy" of the cartoons, which were "smart and brutal and subversive". Ideas for animation, such as the style of Rowdy's death, were primarily pitched by Hollingsworth and James Bowman, and then refined or rejected. Brooker pushed for a high level of violence in the cartoon.
Brooker's previous experience with interactive fiction led him to be wary of complicated story paths. He was interested in the viewer determining the storyline outcome indirectly, rather than through direct choices as with Bandersnatch. He arrived at the idea of a skill-based game, like those in the franchise Dragon's Lair. The questions in Cat Burglar are intended to emphasize the speed of answering over knowledge. The interactive work was the first by Netflix to incorporate trivia, preceding the April 2022 game Trivia Quest, an adaptation of Trivia Crack with episodic trivia questions framed within a narrative story. The animation was done by Boulder Media.
Netflix removed most of the interactive media, including Cat Burglar, from their catalogue in December 2024.
| 1st Children's and Family Emmy Awards | Outstanding Interactive Media | Cat Burglar | |||
| Outstanding Music Direction and Composition for an Animated Program | Christopher Willis |
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