The ‘Powerpuff’ Live-Action Pilot Will Be Completely Reshot
One of the most intriguing TV series of the upcoming fall season was Powerpuff, a CW series that not only took the popular Powerpuff Girls animated series and turned it into a live-action property, it also aged up the characters from bubbly little kids to cynical adults. The series featured Chloe Bennet as Blossom, Dove Cameron as Bubbles, and Yana Perrault as Buttercup; that’s them above.
The CW made a pilot of Powerpuff but clearly the results were not what they hoped for. Instead of ordering a full season of the show, the pilot, which was written and executive produced by Diablo Cody and Heather Regnier, will now be completely rewritten and reshot. The key cast will remain, as will Cody and Regnier. It’s basically just a TV pilot mulligan.
Warner Bros. TV President Channing Dungey had this to say about the efforts to get Powerpuff off the ground at Deadline:
We’ve got a trio of terrific actresses at the center of that.I’m not going to say that it hasn’t been a challenge. Bringing a children’s cartoon into live-action adulthood has been a really fine line to walk, but I think we’ve done a pretty great job walking it.
It’s not all bad news for the CW, though; they did order several new series for the fall. Fans of female superheroes should be most excited about Naomi, from filmmaker Ava DuVernay and based on the recent DC comic book by Brian Michael Bendis, David F. Walker, and Jamal Campbell about a teen girl who discovers that she is a superhero. As for Powerpuff, it may live to fight crime another day. Just not right away.