Cringe at the leaked pilot script for CW’s ‘The Powerpuff Girls’
The live-action version of Cartoon Network’s beloved animated series The Powerpuff Girls has been one of the most talked about pilot projects of the 2021-2022 season. Yesterday, the CW revealed that in addition to the reboot of The 4400, the network is planning on moving forward with the spinoff All American: Homecoming and the DC series Naomi from Ava DuVernay.
Not going forward is the Black Lightning spinoff Painkiller and millenial nun dramedy Our Ladies of Brooklyn. Meanwhile, the Nancy Drew spinoff Tom Swift is still in contention over at the CW. But what about the Powerpuff Girls? After all, the live-action sequel series has been getting a lot of press over the past couple of months. Apparently, The CW has decided that The Powerpuff Girls needs a bit of a makeover.
Cast Chloe Bennet, Dove Cameron, Yana Perrault, and Donald Faison remain attached to the project along with the remaining cast & creative team behind the show. So what is the plan? The CW plans on reworking the pilot for The Powerpuff Girls in the off season along with filming a new version of it. So, the real question is, was the original pilot really that bad? Based off of the leaked script? Yes, yes it was.
The Powerpuff Girls script was leaked?
Yes, yes it was. And, before you ask, it’s bad. It’s so bad. People are sharing screenshots on Twitter and making fun of it. Oh No They Didn’t did a total breakdown of the major plot points for the script so you don’t have to suffer through actually reading the thing. And, honestly, it’s the biggest sort of yikes that you can imagine. The CW “reworking” the pilot better mean that they’re just building the show from the ground up.
One of the lines from the pilot has Buttercup threatening to reveal Blossom’s nudes to the world in order to get her to wake up. Only for her to tell Bubbles that something similar had worked for her once. That was something in a script. Mojo Jojo is Mojo & his son Jojo, who are humans. Mojo was the Professor’s lab partner before going evil. It turns out? Blossom killed him! Blossom killed a dude in the pilot.
The Professor, rather than use his brilliance of actually creating life to better the world, is a stereotypical abusive showbiz parent. And, and, if you really want your childhood thoroughly spat on, then the knowledge that The Powerpuff Girls cartoon exists in the show and is made fun of will definitely do that. It’s terrible. It’s horrible. Yet, The CW thinks that they can fix this monstrosity.
Can The CW fix The Powerpuff Girls?
The kind of “off cycle” reshoots/rework that The Powerpuff Girls is going for is rare, but it has happened. Actually, it’s happened with some of the biggest shows out there. Game of Thrones and Seinfeld are two major examples of game-changing television shows that have had their pilots reworked. Now does this mean that The Powerpuff Girls will reach those heights? Probably not.
Hopefully, however, the crew of The Powerpuff Girls can use fan reactions from the leaked script as a guide going forward on how to handle the reworking of the show. For example, making Bubbles a coked out failed reality television star that has been to rehab multiple times? Probably scrap that. Or how about the Professor being an abusive human being? Maybe get rid of that too.
Just burn it all down and make something that doesn’t make us want to blind ourselves so we never have to witness The Powerpuff Girls live-action pilot ever again. We haven’t read a script this bad ever since we checked out Joss Whedon’s attempt at writing a Wonder Woman movie.
