While The CW has been home to a number of buzzworthy series, the projects that don’t make their way onto the network are also talked about quite a bit. Among them is Powerpuff, a live-action reimagining of Cartoon Network’s Powerpuff Girls, which filmed a pilot and made headlines with its set photos before ultimately being shuffled off-cycle in 2021. Details have largely been slim about Powerpuff, outside of the update that Blossom actress Chloe Bennet would not be staying on the project. According to a new report from TVLine, the series still isn’t exactly dead yet, with the outlet claiming that the show is still “in some stage of development.”
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Based on the original Cartoon Network animated series and characters created by Craig McCracken,ย Powerpuffย would catch up with Blossom, Bubbles (Descendants‘ Dove Cameron), and Buttercup (Broadway actressย 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?
Heather Regnier (Veronica Mars) and Diablo Cody (Juno) are writing the script for theย Powerpuffย pilot and Maggie Kiley is set to direct. Regnier, Cody, and Kiley will all executive produce alongside Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, and David Madden. The pilot also starred Donald Faison as Professor Drake Utonium, and Nicholas Podany as Mojo Jojo Jr.
“I can’t speak on it yet because they are still changing. Such a funny thing,” Cameron revealed in an interview last year. “They didn’t decide to rework the pilot because the script leaked. I just need to say that that wasn’t what happened. We had to reshoot it anyway for a couple of reasons.”
“I’m actually very excited at the thought of [reshooting the pilot] because I was texting the girls and we’re like, ‘Oh. Well, now we know what we’re doing. What an amazing thing,’” Cameron continued. “You never get to do that as an actor, go back and be like, ‘What would I have done differently?’”
This echoes comments made by The CW president Mark Pedowitz, who revealed during a call with reporters last year that the original pilot was “a little too campy.”
“The reason you do pilots is because, sometimes things miss, and this was just a miss,” Pedowitzย explained at the time. “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 The CW redeveloping itsย Powerpuffย pilot? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
