It is not often that a leaked trailer for a canceled project is met with whoops of joy, but that is exactly the reaction that the reveal of The CW’sPowerpuff Girlsseries has received. It is now almost two years since the plug was pulled on the live-action iteration of the iconic animated series, and while there was outcry fromPowerpuff Girlsfans everywhere at the time, the only crying going on now is tears of joy that the “god-awful” series never saw the light of day.
Take a trip back to 2020, when the first word of a live-actionPowerpuff Girlsseries was revealed to a reasonable level of excitement. The following year,the lead trio of Chloe Bennett, Dove Cameron, and Yana Perraultwere cast as older versions of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, respectively, and a script by Diablo Cody and Heather Regnier was in place for the pilot episode. However, just two months after the casting announcement, a leaked version of the script landed online and was instantly ripped apart by fans, seemingly leading The CW to completely reshoot the entire pilot. A year later, the series lost Chloe Bennett, and in May 2023, it was scrapped.
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Now, fans have been able to see what they missed out on - before it was removed amid copyright claims - and the reaction has been pretty much the same as being told that they missed out on a new strain of COVID-19. In a long – ridiculously long – trailer, the three leads are seen as jaded former superheroes, vomiting in bins, spouting cringeworthy dialogue, and looking like something cobbled together as a college student’s holiday project. Needless to say, fans of the franchise have taken no time at all in thanking the gods of entertainment for saving them from what had the potential to be the series that killed off the franchise and The CW with it.
What Are Fans Saying About the ‘Powerpuff Girls’ Trailer?
There are very few TV shows or movies that are completely without support, butthe leaked trailer forThe Powerpuff Girlsmay be one of the rare instances when everyone hates what they have seen. Complains ranged from bad dialogue, to the changes made to well-known characters – such as turning the franchise’s monkey villain Mojo Jojo into two regular men, each with one half of the name – and ending with the fact that this thing made it as far as it did into the world without someone saying, “Hang on a minute, what the hell is this? Please make it stop.”
Trawling through the many posts on X following the trailer’s arrival, it is clear that had the series made it to screens, it would have been a complete disaster. @Melothehm gave it both barrels, writing, “For the first time in my life, a trailer for a canceled show has genuinely silenced me. First, whoever for a split second thought thisPowerpuff Girlslive action would have been even 1% successful.” That was followed by @Elvick, who was even more angry at the idea of the show ever making it to screens, saying, “This is so awful. Thank you to whatever God made sure this died. And may it stay dead forever. And everyone who thought, ‘great idea’ doesn’t continue to work. And hearing the “hurr hurr the cartoon whitewashed us hurr durr” was way more offensive than just reading about it.”
Some did try to salvage something from the soul-destroying footage, but the most that could be mustered was to lament on what could have been if someone had created a completely different version to the one that was made. @TheMegaMitch said, “The premise of “adultPowerpuff Girlsthat are disillusioned with their superhero childhood” isn’t a bad concept by itself and could have been done really well – but holy sh-t this is god-awful.”
It seems safe to say that The CW, which has been under plenty of strain in the last few years as they shut down the majority of their scripted programming to meet new cost targets, dodged a bullet with this one. Now, hopefully, it never sees the light of day again.
Powerpuff Girls
