Live-Action ‘Powerpuff Girls’ Show In The Works At The CW
Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup may be heading back to TV, but in a way you’ve never seen them before: in live-action.
The CW is reportedly developing a live-actionPowerpuff Girlssequel series, which takes place years after the events of the Cartoon Network animated show. Oscar winnerDiablo Cody(Juno) is writing and executive producing, andGreg Berlanti, the architect of The CW’s Arrowverse and shows likeRiverdaleandChilling Adventures of Sabrina, is on board as an executive producer.
Varietyhas the news about a live-action sequel series based onThe Powerpuff Girls, as well as a description of what we can expect if the show moves forward:
The original series was created by Craig McCracken, and it aired on Cartoon Network from 1998 until 2005, releasing 78 episodes over six seasons. The show followed three kindergarten-aged girls who live with their father, Professor Utonium. He had attempted to engineer the ideal little girl with a mixture of “sugar, spice, and everything nice,” but accidentally included a dose of Chemical X, imbuing the girls with superhuman abilities like flight, super strength, and more. Here’s the animated show’s intro and theme music, which may briefly fling some of you of a certain age right back into your childhoods watching Saturday morning cartoons:
This new version, which comes from Warner Bros. TV, is the brainchild of Diablo Cody – who won an Oscar for writing the screenplay forJunoand also wroteJennifer’s Body,Young Adult,Tully, and TV shows likeOne MississippiandThe United States of Tara– andHeather Regnier, who has writing credits on shows likeVeronica Mars,Sleepy Hollow,iZombie, andFalling Skies.
A huge part ofThe Powerpuff Girls' appeal was its bubbly animation style, which purposefully clashed with the violent fights the girls would often get into in order to save their city from encroaching villains or super-sized bad guys. Will this show be interested in trying to recapture those large-scale fight scenes in live-action, or will it just be a stripped-back, action-free drama about these girls as young women?
Greg Berlanti,Sarah Schechter, andDavid Maddenwill executive produce via Berlanti Productions. Berlanti and Schecter have proven to be especially adept at creating compelling, meme-worthy content aimed at teen audiences, and they’ve been behind several resurrections of recognizable properties already. In other words, with the creative team assembled here, they might all actually be able to pull this off.
