Powerpuff, Justice U, and More Pilots Officially Scrapped at The CW

The CW has been undergoing a lot of changes after being acquired by Nexstar, with a lot of its existing scripted programming coming to a close or being canceled altogether. If Nexstar’s “new normal” for the network wasn’t already apparent, a new update finally seals the fate of a few long-in-development projects. According to a new report from TVLine, The CW is no longer pursuing any “prospective series” that were put into development during the network’s old regime. This includes the live-action Powerpuff Girls remake Powerpuff, which filmed a pilot in 2022 before being retooled off-cycle. It also includes Justice U, a previously-proposed spinoff for Arrow‘s John Diggle / Spartan (David Ramsey); the Archie Comics-inspired Jake Chang, and a female-led Zorro reboot. That being said, there’s a chance that these prospective shows aren’t entirely dead, as the respective studios that were originally working with The CW could end up developing them at other networks or platforms, but only time will tell if that ends up happening.

“We’ve already given those back to the studios,” Brad Schwartz, The CW’s President of Entertainment explained, “so they’re free to develop those and sell them anywhere.”

What is Powerpuff about?

Powerpuff would catch 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 is Justice U about?

In Justice U, after spending years fighting alongside masked heroes, John Diggle embarks on a new mission to recruit five young meta humans to live undercover as freshmen at a prestigious university. There he will oversee their education and train them to become the heroes of tomorrow. 

“Obviously he has the deepest history with Flash because he knows all the characters on Flash. So, every time he appears on these shows, he fits within the storytelling of that specific episode,” Ramsey told ComicBook.com in 2021. “But he’s kind of hiding something in his back pocket. And we started telling that on Batwoman. They kind of have these headaches that he’s kind of there to see a doctor. Ultimately, what he saw in the box, he declined the invitation to. That decision has consequences. And we start telling ultimately, his cosmic destiny if you will, his kind of galactic destiny if you will. We begin to tell the consequences of denying that through this kind of crossover that we’re doing.”

How do you feel about The CW finally scrapping Powerpuff, Justice U, and its other potential pilots? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!