Warner Bros. TV Scraps Its Live-Action Powerpuff Girls Series

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Warner Bros. TV Scraps Its Live-Action Powerpuff Girls Series

Warner Bros. Television has reportedly put the final nail in the coffin of its planned live-action Powerpuff Girls series, Powerpuff.

In May 2023, news broke that Powerpuff would not be moving forward at The CW. Brad Schwartz, the network’s President of Entertainment, confirmed that the series had been returned to Warner Bros. TV. This meant that the studio was free to continue developing the show so it could potentially air on a different platform. However, TVLine‘s Matt Webb Mitovich now reports that Warner Bros. has opted to scrap the series entirely. According to Mitovich’s sources, Powerpuff is no longer in development in any form or fashion.

The troubled development of The CW’s Powerpuff

In August 2020, The CW was reported to be developing a live-action reboot of The Powerpuff Girls, the fan-favorite Cartoon Network animated series created by Craig McCracken. The show was later revealed to be titled Powerpuff. It received a pilot order in February 2021. Chloe Bennett, Dove Cameron, and Yana Perrault were cast in the three lead roles of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, respectively. Donald Faison was cast as their father, Professor Utonium.

However, news broke in May 2021 that The CW had opted not to order Powerpuff to series. Originally, the plan was to retool and re-pilot the show with the same cast and creative team. But then, in August 2021, Bennet was revealed to have left the project. Despite these setbacks, and despite updates being few and far between, Powerpuff was said to still be in active development as of July 2022.

That leads us to this past May, when The CW dropped the series outright. This move came amid the downsizing taking place at the network following its acquisition by the Nexstar Media Group in October 2022. While the live-action reboot is no longer moving forward, The Powerpuff Girls is getting yet another animated reboot at Cartoon Network, this time with original creator McCracken involved.