Uh-oh, some real footage of “Powerpuff” has been found. You might recall that one of the last things The CW tried to put in motion before it sold itself away was a live-action take on the beloved cartoon, featuring grown-up, disillusioned versions of the characters. The script for the pilot leaked back in 2021 when the project was still in active development and was met with universal disgust.
Now the Lost Media Busters, a social media group dedicated to tracking down lost and rare footage, have somehow uncovered an internal test trailer based around the unreleased pilot. The footage seems to match what was written in the script, for better or worse (but mostly worse).
We’d show you what we’ve seen, but WB doesn’t particularly like that this is out there (can you blame them?) and any YouTube video we embed would just disappear in minutes. So…we’ll just have to describe the carnage in words.
The trailer is authentically narrated by Tom Kenny, making the whole thing feel even more surreal than it is. Professor Utonium, played by Donald Faison, dramatically introduces the child-age Puffs and seems to have done so on purpose. There is then a montage of Townsville newspaper headlines describing fights we don’t see, mixed with shots of real merchandise. In lieu of the expense of hiring and training a monkey, we instead get “Mojo and Jojo,” a father-son human duo of evil scientists.
The girls grow up and become Chloe Bennet as Blossom, Dove Cameron as Bubbles and Yana Perrault as Buttercup. Only Blossom seems to retain her personality; Buttercup has become a stiff bluenose who frequently uses words like “gender-normative” and Bubbles turns into a drunk dopey influencer wannabe. They had to split up after Blossom killed Mojo in an apparent accident (but remember there’s more than one of him) and public opinion turned against them.
Diablo Cody was responsible for the pilot and….boy, can you tell. There are so many snarky witticisms packed into these three and a half minutes alone I can barely count them. The girls reunite to stop an evil child, who is apparently Princess, from brainwashing Utonium into acting like a supervillain. The Rowdyruff Boys were prominently in the script, but there are no clips of them here
Keep in mind though: had Powerpuff made it to air, it’s unlikely it would have been the specific version the trailer pulls its clips from. After seeing the results, Chloe Bennet quit the project and would’ve had to be recast. The execs did not like the pilot either, but mainly for being “too campy” (were they aware what network this is?) Mark Pedowitz, CEO of The CW at the time, told the press “It didn’t feel as rooted in reality as it might’ve felt. But again, you learn things when you test things out. And in this case, we felt, let’s take a step back and go back to the drawing board.”
In my opinion, a live-action Powerpuff Girls that took itself “seriously” would have been even worse. And the ship has since righted itself: not only is this project dead, but WB is finally making a “real” Powerpuff Girls revival with creator Craig McCracken in control. No one knows when we’re getting it, but the likelihood of it containing Dove Cameron in a cheesy blue spandex suit is very low.
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