Well Now I’m Mad That The Live-Action ‘Powerpuff Girls’ Series Got Canceled, Thanks CW!
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If you don’t remember that The CW shot a pilot for a live-action Powerpuff Girls series and canceled it before it even aired, you’re probably not alone. The trailer for the Powerpuff Girls reboot has surfaced online, and it’s kind of making me question everything that went down.
The series-that-never-was cast Dove Cameron as Bubbles, Chloe Bennet as Blossom, and Yana Perrault as Buttercup. The Powerpuff Girls live-action additionally featured Donald Faison as Professor Utonium, Robyn Lively as Sara Bellum, and Nicholas Podany as Jojo, son of Mojo. Nosy would-be fans and/or haters could previously read the alleged leaked pilot screenplay online via the Internet Archive. It was co-written by Heather Regnier and Diablo Cody–whose dialogue, to be fair, is not everyone’s cup of tea. It is mine, however. Steep me up.
What happened in the ‘Powerpuffs’ leaked script & trailer?
Paging through the script, there’s an Elon Musk joke that I don’t think would play well in 2025, shots fired at Juggalos for no reason, and a “moveon.org” joke that has been made before and was only funny the first time–but other than that, it’s solid and very funny! It’s kind of a biting ode to millennial burnout and Peter Pan syndrome. It’s a more grown-up take, obviously, with panic attacks and talk of boners–but still cartoonish in what IMHO is a very fun way.
Being able to see the footage helps underline what they were going for with the tone. The trailer, which has already been taken down by Warner Brothers, is confirmed to be real footage according to Variety, but that it should not be considered an official or “final” trailer, edit-wise. It showed the three Bs as children, hot mess teenagers, and young adults with living vastly different lives away from superhero-dom and reluctantly reuniting in Townsville. The show looked very goofy with low-budget action sequences, but knowingly and intentionally so. In no way was this trying to be the Arrow-verse.
However, the reaction to the footage on social media is overwhelmingly negative and mocking. There must be 50 ways to say “dodged a bullet” in these comments. I’ve never seen so many people celebrate a show’s cancelation like this. What does it say about me that I think this show looked like it had the potential to be hilarious and good? It is crystal clear that the Powerpuff Girls reboot knew exactly what it was. It hits a very specific exaggerated comedic tone that’s more Josie and the Pussycats (2021) than Riverdale, you know?
Why was the Powerpuff Girls reboot canceled?
Powerpuffs‘ road to the ultimate axing was fraught with drama. The CW ordered the pilot and cast Bennet, Perrault, and Cameron in 2021. But not long after they finished the pilot, the news broke that the whole series was going to be reworked and the pilot reshot. “This was just a miss,” chairman and CEO of The CW Mark Pedowitz said, per. Variety. The sense of humor that I, for one, liked in the footage from the trailer did not land with the powers-that-be at the network.
“In this case the pilot didn’t work,” Pedowitz continued. “But because we see there’s enough elements in there, we wanted to give it another shot. So that’s why we didn’t want to go forward with what we had. Tonally, it might’ve felt a little too campy. It didn’t feel as rooted in reality as it might’ve felt. But again, you learn things when you test things out. And so in this case, we felt, let’s take a step back and go back to the drawing board.”
Then, in August 2021 a few months later, Bennet exited the series for scheduling reasons. Chatter online speculated that the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. may have wanted to distance herself from the project for other reasons, especially after the pilot script leaked and the internet tore it to pieces… but that was just speculation! Then there were crickets about the show altogether, and by 2023 according to TVLine the show was officially “no longer in development,” a.k.a. canceled.
Maybe the ‘Powerpuff Girls’ reboot isn’t for everyone
Maybe we’re all just jaded adults now. Maybe we’re not capable of letting a television show with silly, candy colored 90s/early 00s energy like Spy Kids or Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion into our hearts. (Both of those movies featured Alan Cumming… is he the secret sauce?) If you caught the leaked trailer and hated it, that’s fine as long as you remember a trailer can’t hurt you. We’re all entitled to our own opinions about things that never happened. But now I’m kinda mad that this show got canceled before it could get cooking.
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