The Powerpuff Girls was set to be adapted into live-action, giving human-like features to the three protagonists—Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. The original ‘90s animated series, created by Craig McCracken, followed “three little kindergarten-aged superheroes who fly around and beat up bad guys,” as he described in a past interview.
A live-action adaptation was in development but was ultimately canceled. Below, News47.us has rounded up everything to know about the scrapped project.
Footage from The CW’s live-action “Powerpuff Girls” series that never aired has leaked online.
The cast featured Chloe Bennet as Blossom, Dove Cameron as Bubbles and Yana Perrault as Buttercup. In the leaked footage, Bubbles is “constantly drinking” and Buttercup rails against… pic.twitter.com/FloEAJYXTw
— Variety (@Variety) March 6, 2025
Dove Cameron was cast as Bubbles, Chloe Bennet as Blossom, Yana Perrault as Buttercup, and Donald Faison as Professor Drake Utonium.
According to Variety, CW chairman and CEO Mark Pedowitz explained, “The reason you do pilots is because sometimes things miss, and this was just a miss. 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 [Bros. TV] studios.”
He continued, “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.”
Although the live-action adaptation was canceled, leaked footage surfaced online. Sources at The CW confirmed to Variety that the footage was real. The leaked trailer portrayed Blossom as “constantly stressed,” Bubbles as “constantly drinking,” and Buttercup as “constantly rebellious.”
