According to Newsweek, Tom Shadyac, John Hughes, and a team-up of Brian Grazer and Gary Ross all failed to impress Geisel with their theoretical 'Grinch' adaptations, with the latter wanting the titular Christmas thief to travel into other Seuss books along the way. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas,' directed by Ron Howard and starring Jim Carrey, arrived in 2000, two years after multiple Hollywood power-players entered an intense pitch-fest in a Beverly Hills conference room presided over by Geisel. The first feature film adaptation of one of those books, 'Dr. Seuss died in 1991, his wife, Audrey Geisel, became a fiercely protective guardian of her husband's literary works.
