Back in 2023, The CW had big plans for a live-action series featuring the grown-up Powerpuff Girls, but the project faced numerous challenges and was ultimately canceled. Recently, a teaser video surfaced online, giving fans a glimpse of what the show could have been like, and it's certainly sparking conversation.
The video, which was briefly available on the YouTube channel "Lost Media Busters," was quickly removed due to a copyright takedown by Warner Bros. Entertainment. The three-and-a-half-minute trailer sets the stage for the series: Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup are now young adults who have moved out of their childhood home. Blossom (played by Chloe Bennet) is portrayed as stressed and burnt out, Bubbles (Dove Cameron) struggles with drinking, and Buttercup (Yana Perrault) is rebellious and challenges gender norms.
The CW has confirmed to Variety that the footage is authentic, but it was not an official trailer and was never meant for public viewing.
The live-action Powerpuff Girls series was first announced in 2020 but faced multiple setbacks, leading to its cancellation in 2023. This included an unsuccessful pilot and the departure of Chloe Bennet from the project.
“The reason you do pilots is because sometimes things miss, and this was just a miss," explained CW chairman and CEO Mark Pedowitz regarding the initial pilot. "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 studios. In this case, the pilot didn’t work. 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.”
