Everyone loves The Powerpuff Girls! The adventures of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup were a mainstay on Cartoon Network in the late 90s and early 2000s, delivering day-glo hyperkinetic action and writing far smarter and funnier than it needed to be.
But what if, instead of the girls being upbeat kindergarten-aged children rendered in an ultra-exaggerated chibi style, they were live-action depressed adult failures suffering from alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder, and sex addiction? No wait, come back, we’re serious!
This bizarre and offputting concept was at the heart of The CW’s frankly insane Powerpuff, a “dark” live-action reboot that positioned itself as the “real” version of the characters’ stories and dismisses the beloved original cartoon as “whitewashing” their story. It sounds like a joke, but The CW decided this concept was worth splurging money on a pilot episode in 2021.
The channel’s response on seeing the pilot appears to have been to bury the project in one of those caves they use to store nuclear waste, and Powerpuff was never spoken of again. Until now! @LostMediaBuster has tracked down the trailer for the episode, but before you watch it be sure to place a cushion below your chin, as your jaw is about to drop at just how terrible this is:
🚨BREAKING🚨: For the first time ever, enjoy the trailer to the cancelled adult-oriented Powerpuff Girls live-action CW reboot.
— Lost Media Busters | @lostmediabusters.bsky.social (@LostMediaBuster) March 6, 2025
Full trailer in the replies. pic.twitter.com/aHCkoOTenG
This is merely a clip of the full leaked trailer. You can watch that here, but even at three minutes, it’s an ordeal to get through. Words fail me on how misconceived this thing is — I’m not even a Powerpuff Girls fan in the first place, and even I’m low-key angry how much this butchers and disrespects the excellent source material.
Let’s rewind a little to 2022 and an interview with the live-action Bubbles, Dove Cameron, who said: “The first time we did the pilot, we’ve all talked about it and likened it to Game of Thrones“. Right. Yeah. Uh-huh. That’s the first comparison we drew too, to be honest.
Responses from actual fans range from nervous laughter to sheer disbelief, rightly dubbing it:
This is literally the worst thing I have ever seen.
— LEΩ (@_Leomega_) March 6, 2025
Praising whichever suit at The CW consigned this show to the abyss:
God bless everyone involved in the decision to cancel this show.
— Old Timey Bill (@OldTimeyBill) March 6, 2025
And as for Oscar-winner Diablo Cody’s script?
It reads like it’s written by people in their 50s who think that’s how young girls talked a few years ago
— Jazzyruf (@Jazzyruf2) March 6, 2025
A script this dire couldn’t be saved by even the most talented director, not that Powerpuff seems to have anyone particularly talented behind the cameras either. The consensus is that this looks like about on the level of an SNL skit (possibly this is unfair to even SNL), with awful visuals, cheap VFX, and an ugly aesthetic.
Perhaps thankfully for all concerned, this trailer appears to be the only footage we’ll ever see of Powerpuff. Rumors already had it pegged as an abomination from concept to execution, but this proves that we seriously dodged a bullet. Bringing these characters into live-action would be a mistake however you do it, but this has to be the absolute worst possible result: alienating and mocking existing fans while delivering barely lukewarm social commentary in a buzzword-laden script.
Let’s take awful live-action Bubbles’ cue, moveon.org the heck out of here, and once again forget this crime against cartoon history ever happened.
Published: Mar 6, 2025 08:55 am