Powerpuff Co-Creator Teases “Really Weird” Cancelled CW Series

From Riverdale to the Arrowverse to The Vampire Diaries, The CW served as the home of some truly wacky and beloved franchises. In 2020, that was expected to include Powerpuff, a live-action sequel inspired by the fan-favorite animated series The Powerpuff Girls. Despite filming a pilot and undergoing a number of creative changes, it was confirmed last year that Powerpuff is no longer in development — but now, we have a bit of an inkling of what it could have entailed. In a recent interview with The Wrap, Powerpuff writer Diablo Cody reflected on the series’ fate, hinting that the final product of the show would have been “something kind of weird.”

“There were honestly a lot of issues. It’s a bummer,” Cody explained. “I was really bummed out about that. Heather Regnier and I, who created it together, we were very, very excited about that show. But it just didn’t pan out. And sometimes things just don’t. I mean, to be honest, like, most of the time, things don’t.”

“So the idea was that the Powerpuff Girls were adults, and they were really disillusioned because they felt that they had almost been exploited, like child stars, when they were young superheroes,” Cody explained. “And so they hadn’t really used their powers in years. And then Townsville was under attack once again, and they realized that they had to get over their differences and reunite… I think just in general, making the Powerpuff Girls adults was a challenge, because it would have probably been easier to just do a straight live-action adaptation of the existing show. But we wanted to do something kind of weird.”

“I would not be surprised if there is a live-action Powerpuff Girls show at some point, but they probably won’t hire me to do it again,” Cody added.

What Is Powerpuff About?

Powerpuff would have caught up with Blossom (Agents of SHIELD‘s Chloe Bennet, who later departed the show), Bubbles (Descendants‘ Dove Cameron), and Buttercup (Broadway actress Yana Perrault), who used to be America’s pint-sized superheroes but now are disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime-fighting. Will they agree to reunite now that the world needs them more than ever?

“The reason you do pilots is because, sometimes things miss, and this was just a miss,” former The CW president Mark Pedowitz previously explained in 2021. “We believe in the cast completely. We believe in Diablo [Cody] and Heather [Regnier], the writers. We believe in the auspices of Greg Berlanti and Warner [Bros. TV] studios.”

“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.”

What do you think of Diablo Cody’s new comments about Powerpuff? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!