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Dove Cameron Opens Up About Failed Powerpuff Girls Live-Action Pilot
2021 was kind of a wild time for fans of The Powerpuff Girls when The CW officially gave a pilot order to their live-action iteration of the beloved Cartoon Network animated series. The series, titled Powerpuff, was from written and executive produced by Heather Regnier and Diablo Cody and was set to star Chloe Bennet as Blossom, Yana Perrault as Buttercup, and Dove Cameron as Bubbles and would have followed the girls as girls as “disillusioned twentysomethings who regret spending their youth fighting criminals”. However, things began to shift when it was announced that the pilot was being developed and, later, that Bennet had exited the series. Earlier this year, The CW officially scrapped the series and it was later confirmed that the project was no longer in development at Warner Bros. TV. Now, Cameron is opening up about the failed pilot and while she can’t reveal much, she says it was one of the most fun things and she loved what they did shoot.
“Let me just say that what we shot, I loved, and that was one of the most fun things, and I think whatever you thought it was gonna be, it wasn’t gonna be that, and it was very campy and very sexy and very fun, and I love Diablo Cody,” Cameron told Elle.
What Was Powerpuff Going to Be About?
Powerpuff would have caught up with Blossom (Agents of SHIELD‘s Chloe Bennet, who later departed the show), Bubbles (Descendants‘ Dove Cameron), and Buttercup (Broadway actress Yana Perrault), who used to be America’s pint-sized superheroes but now are disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime-fighting. Will they agree to reunite now that the world needs them more than ever? A pilot was filmed before being retooled off-cycle.
“The reason you do pilots is because, sometimes things miss, and this was just a miss,” former The CW president Mark Pedowitz previously explained in 2021. “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.”
“In this case, the pilot didn’t work,” Pedowitz continued. “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.”
Why Didn’t the Powerpuff Pilot Work?
Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken told The Los Angeles Times that in his one meeting with creators of the live-action series that turning the characters into adults turned them into something other than the Powerpuff Girls. It made them generic.
“I had one meeting with them and I told them, ‘When you turn them into adults, they’re no longer the Powerpuff Girls because if they’re adults, that’s just three super girls who didn’t have to deal with being kids,’ McCracken said. “That’s a completely different show.”
