CW’s ‘Powerpuff’ To Be Reworked, Original Pilot Scrapped
CW’s take on The Powerpuff Girls has gotten off to a really bad start.
On Monday, CW announced a number of decisions regarding its shows for the next season. Among the bits of news, we found out that Powerpuff, their take on Cartoon Network’s legendary animated series, was getting canned… for now.
The series had recently shot its pilot episode, and we even received a full official look at the protagonists, but it seems like the quality simply wasn’t there. Now, the network has decided to rework the show, hopefully filming a new pilot later this year and off-cycle. The four leads — Chloe Bennet, Dove Cameron, Yana Perrault, and Donald Faison — remain attached to the project, as does the remainder of the cast and the creative team behind the show.
Things got shakier yesterday, as a supposed script from the series leaked and was passed around on Reddit and Twitter. It was embarrassing to say the least, completely out of touch with the generation it was trying to appeal to, and filled with cringy “edgy” attitudes and lots of sex talk. Some folks claimed it was a fake (how could it be that bad, right?), but a few hours later copyright claims started to hit, so… yeah. I won’t go into details for obvious reasons, but the script can still be found if you search hard enough.
CW boss Mark Pedowitz later came out to talk about the decision to scrap the pilot episode, which “might’ve felt a little too campy,” and send the show back into development. He was surprisingly sincere about the whole ordeal:
“The reason we do pilots is sometimes things miss, this was just a miss… We believe in the cast completely, we believe in Diablo and Heather, the writers… in this case, the pilot didn’t work… You learn things and you test things out. In this case we felt let’s take a step back and go back to the drawing board because this is a powerful property, it has engaged a lot of interest and we want to get it right before we put it out.”
In addition to Bennet, Cameron, Perrault, and Faison, Robyn Lively, Tom Kenny, and Nicholas Podanny round out the cast. Powerpuff is being produced by Berlanti Productions and Vita Vera Films in association with Warner Bros. Television.
Francisco J. Ruiz is that guy who has watched Jurassic Park a thousand times and loves Star Wars. His hunger for movies is only matched by his love for video games. He graduated in English Studies from the University of Malaga, in Spain. As he keeps writing about what he enjoys (and doesn’t) for websites all over, he’s continuing his studies.
