Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but The Powerpuff Girls Reboot is officially canceled by The CW. Thus, we won’t see our favorite childhood girls saving the world from evil in live action.
The news comes after the cancellation of the series was officially confirmed on The CW by TVLine. According to The CW, The Powerpuff Girls Reboot is no longer in development. Many other shows under the former CW President Mark Pedowitz’s undertaking were canceled, including Zorro, a female-led series, Jake Chang, a spinoff of Archie’s comics, and Justice U, the Arroverse offshoot.
Table of Contents
Live-Action The Powerpuff Girls Reboot And Female ‘Zorro’ Series Scrapped at The CW!
The current CW President of Entertainment, Brad Schwartz, said, “We’ve already given those back to the studios, so they’re free to develop those and sell them anywhere.” The Powerpuff Girls reboot’s pilot episode was filmed a while back in 2021. It included Dove Cameron, Yana Perrault, Chloe Bennet, and others, but The CW decided to not pick it up for further development.
According to the previously provided description, The Powerpuff Girls reboot was supposed to center around the crime-fighting trio in their early twenties. Described as resentful and angry s*x addicts, this new chapter in their books would shade their tumultuous childhood of being pushed into the superhero spotlight by their fame-hungry father.
The reboot had a pretty promising celebrity lineup, including Dove Cameron as Bubbles, Chloe Bennett as Blossom, Yana Perault as Buttercu,p and Donald Faison as Professor Utonium.
However, the decision to axe the much-awaited live-action series came after a series of leaked images and possible scripts from the sets. The reception received from the leaked script, and photos was pretty negative, and in light of the leaks, the production opted out of the project. But, the production simply stated that the series seems ‘too campy.’
While giving an interview in 2021, Pedowitz stated, “Sometimes things miss, and this was just a miss. Tonally, it might have felt a little too campy. It didn’t feel as rooted in reality as it might have. But again, you learn things when you test things out. And in this case, we felt like, ‘Let’s take a step back and go back to the drawing board.’
The CW Cancels The Powerpuff Girls, Zorro, And Jake Chang, Among Others!
The CW has axed many other shows other than The Powerpuff Girls reboot. Some of them had a good run while they lasted, but it was not enough for them to continue.
Zorro, the female-led series, is a brainchild of Robert Rodriguez, famous for Spy Kids and Sin City. He had previously taken up Zorro with NBC, but was bailed from there as well. The CW started the development of Zorro in February 2022, along with other projects like Gotham Knights, The Winchesters, and Walker Independence.
Jake Chang was put into development in June 2022. It was described as “an Asian-American-led mystery following the titular 16-year-old private investigator as he navigated the diverse worlds of his ever-gentrifying home of Chinatown.
Another one of the shows axed by The CW is Justice U. Reprising his role as Arrow‘s John Diggle would be David Ramsey. As described by the network earlier, his character, John Wiggle,” embarks on a new mission to recruit five young metahumans to live undercover as freshmen at a prestigious university.
In October 2022, Ramsey gave an exclusive interview to TVLine and stated, “We’re on the second draft of a script, and we just closed the deal on a writer… it’s still in development, and we’re moving forward” ”But it looks like things weren’t supposed to go his way.
As for the shows picked up by the network, Schwartz detailed a development slate created by Nexstar, the new owner of The CW. The new projects include The Great American Bakeover, starring Nancy Birtwhistle, Patti Stanger: Millionaire Matchmaker, a Librarians sequel, and The Force, an unscripted procedural a la COPS.
