The head of the CW no longer wants the Powerpuff girls’ recipe to include sugar, spice, and everything nice. It needs to include grit, reality, and an edgier side of Bubbles, Blossom, and Buttercup Utonium dammit. CEO Mark Pedowitz announced that The Powerpuff Girls reboot is on pause as they reshoot the pilot. Pedowitz says the first version is “too campy,” and “just a miss.” That’s right, it looks like there will be no fun in the reboot of the Cartoon Network original that created the character Him and had three young girls running around fighting a villain named Mojo Jojo. The girls are twenty-somethings now, they’re jaded and traumatized.
This push back means that the series will not air on this year’s schedule on The CW, and will be shelved indefinitely, but Pedowitz ensures the original cast and crew remains on board.
“We believe in the cast completely, we believe in Diablo and Heather, the writers, we believe in the auspices of Greg Berlanti and Warner Studios,” Pedowitz said. “In this case, we felt, let’s take a step back, and go back to the drawing board. Because this is a powerful property, it has engaged a lot of interest, and we want to get it right before we put it out.”
The Powerpuff Girls join the ranks alongside many other kitschy, lighthearted children’s series being remade to match today’s darker, no nonsense world such as Sabrina The Teenage Witch, Riverdale and Nancy Drew (also produced by The CW). Television executives really think millennial want to watch their childhood heroes turn into depressed adults as the world slowly crushes them, too.
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Well that’s not reassuring. Here I thought maybe they had listened to the actual concerns of the audience but, nope, need to strip away even more fun out of it.
“We need a slow-mo scene scored to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’. In every episode.”
#PPGreleasetheSnydercut.
I mean, get Justin Roiland to write the stuff underneath it and I might watch that. Dude with a super gross mouth finally deciding to start flossing. Setup montage of youthful excess, confrontation with mortality, then: fear, five stages of grief, tartar, blood, tears, cross-cuts with a super old guy with arthritis trying to string a guitar, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” agonizing mouthwash rinse.That’s one episode down, twelve to go. Let’s do this, guys.
And keep in mind that, while making the show darker and grittier than ever before, Bubbles will still wear her hair in pigtails and Utonium will still be played by Donald Fasion.
Mojo Jojo says there is a storm coming. One storm exactly says Mojo Jojo.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was the dark reboot of Sabrina The Teenage Witch.
I like the idea of a world where ABC’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch is considered dark and gritty.
Well, it was based off a dark comic book reboot of Sabrina. So there was already proof of concept. Archie has experimented and played with its characters in the comics a lot over the years, so the world feels more elastic.
Based on the supposed leaked script (that CW isn’t responding to questions about), I’d say the ‘campiness’ Pedowitz refers to stems from just how Riverdale-like the tone ended up being. Jokes about the girls leaking each other’s nude photos, walking in on each other having sex with random people, etc. It felt almost too much.I trust Diablo Cody probably intended this to come off as a satire of other CW shows to an extent. I think the main problem is how recent the original series was and the characters ages in the original series. Compared to Archie Comics (which debuted in 1942), the Powerpuff Girls only came out in 1998. Many of us in our 30’s and 40’s were actively engaged with the original show. Additionally, whereas Archie’s cast was always in their late-teens/early-twenties, the whole joke of the Powerpuff Girls were that they were ‘saving the world before bedtime.’ It’s a bit trickier to age up the cast and tone without causing some wincing.
I honestly think the team behind the scenes and the cast are great. I just don’t believe this is the type of series you can approach without sincerity in its writing and tone. I know the CW can do these types of programs (like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin), so I would love to see this show follow suit.
“Hot Archie Who Fucks” ended up working (but only for a while, in my case) because at their core, the characters still resembled themselves in a lot of ways, and because it was bonkers in a very fun way. And even then it lost me around season 3 — characters were too inconsistent, things got too bonkers, chewed through plot was too fast.
If what I read above was the actual plot for PPG, it’s fucking awful. I can’t see how that would work at all.
Also, Archie has a history of its characters being reinterpreted in different ways, PPG does not.
In terms of the main girls it all seems plausible enough— though maybe Bubbles and porn seems a little too far in the direction of self-infantilization and cutesiness going hand in hand with wanting attention by any and all means. But Buttercup did have the most tomboy vibe of them and being a have it all Type A personality also does make enough sense about developing issues re: peaking in elementary school and maintaining expectations.The adults and new character stuff all sounds bonkers, but tone and presentation could go a long way. Josie and the Pussycats sells a lot of ridiculous nonsense but I feel like that still came together in a way that continues to hold up— and if anything the Tara Reid performance there seems like a way where someone could maintain a lot of Bubbles’ character traits but aged up. (Though the more I think about it, affably ditzy and oblivious is a pretty common type or might not provide as much untrod narrative territory??)
I also think cost had something to do with it. The pilot was very, very, very special effects heavy. Just for the CG alone we have two giant monsters, a mecha suit, and hundreds of robot caterpillars. Given how Flash can barely get Gorilla Grodd in more than one episode a season, I can only fathom how much CW was sweating over the budget for this show.
Wait wait hold up hold up hold up. Okay chadowen, okay. Okay chadowen, okay. Diablo Cody wrote this fucking thing? Has she not been sleeping since Tuly or something?
I thought this whole script was written like a parody of Diablo Cody’s style! I had no idea it was written by Diablo herself!!
And just going to add, those 30 and 40 year old fans don’t really want to see their characters grow up.They think they do, if it’s idealized, but the fact that these characters loved might have failed, woof. See, response to TLJ.
I mean, sure, but I’m personally not especially wedded to the Powerpuff Girls and this still kind of smacks of tryhard edgelord bullshit to me at first glance, though. It’s not as if “your favourite childhood characters are now tormented and embittered failures living in a dark, grim cosmos where everyone is a jaded asshole” is an especially fresh take these days, after all.
i was a big fan in the day and will still watch it any time it’s on, and this sounds absolutely horrible to me. however, i am fine with it being made for a younger generation or other demographics that does not include me.
It’s not a CW comic adaptation if it isn’t misery pr0n!
So, for those who missed my other postings, last night somebody on ResetEra leaked what appears to be a pre-production script of the Powerpuff pilot. A guy on Twitter posted some screenshots in a thread that has since been deleted due to DMCA copyright claims from WB, but it’s still rather easy to find the script PDF yourself. Highlights of the script include:-
The narrator being a thing in the show. He describes Buttercup as a
“hardass.” Most egregiously, his first words are “Once upon a time,” not
“The City of Townsville!” He also never actually interacts with the characters.
–
Speaking of, the name of the setting is still Townsville. It was
besieged by giant monsters and bad guys until Blossom accidentally kills
Mojo by kicking a piece of debris away from citizens, which hits a lamp
post that sends shrapnel into Mojo, killing him. The Mayor declares
that the PPG are outlawed from fighting crime afterwards. The monsters
stop attacking afterwards.
–
Blossom abandons her family and eventually attends “an elite women’s
university in the Northeast” before becoming a biotech scientist. She
has a loving boyfriend named Clyde who wants to live a normal life with
her. Her experiences as a PPG left her with heavy PTSD. She sees a
therapist, hallucinates her “inner child” throughout the pilot,
hyperventilates and faints when bad guys are hinted to come back, and
can’t fly without taking a Xanax first. Also, she’s the only PPG to not
have ice breath, ironically.-
Buttercup is a butch lesbian, and the show never makes you forget it.
It opens with her proud of cheating with her girlfriend and getting away
with it, then after the time skip she seduces some girl named Macy
instead of investigating what’s going on. After stopping superheroing,
she moved to Oregon, lived on a farm, and sometimes moonlights as a
firefighter. When Blossom faints, Buttercup tries to get her to wake up by threatening to leak her nude photos, which is a threat that apparently worked for Bubbles in the past.
–
Bubbles is an attention whore. After PPG, she moved to Hollywood. She
gets hungover twice in the pilot, has three failed reality show pilots,
and it’s implied that she got into porn at one point. We first see her in the present day hawking PPG merch from the back of her car. She turns their
reunion into an opportunity for a revival documentary with her
manager/cameraman Ace, who presumably doesn’t have green skin.-
Drake Utonium is basically a pageant dad, exploiting his girls’
superheroing into a media franchise and forced them to follow his
commands and always be pure. He tries to reconnect to the girls during
the pilot, but he’s still a pageant dad. The end of the episode also
reveals he has a hidden lab with lots of evil experiments going on.-
Sara Bellum was Drake’s girlfriend for 9 years and the surrogate mom of
the girls. She left after Utonium angrily tells her that despite living
together for 9 years, she isn’t family. Later on, it’s shown she still
pines for Drake when Blossom visits her.-
Joseph “Mojo” Mondel was Drake’s assistant and the one who actually
invented Chemical X, but because he wasn’t a pretty boy, Drake cut him
out of the media franchise, which turned him into a super villain. He
does not have his speech quirk, is fully human, and does have his
observatory, albeit on a mountain instead of a volcano.-
Jojo is the current Mayor of Townsville, and has always had a crush on
Blossom, who flirts with him at the end of the episode after she decides
to be a superhero again. Anyway, he is losing his re-election campaign
to a female candidate, which he blames on reverse racism due to him
being a white male. Apparently, he fulfilled all his campaign promises
except Free Gelato Fridays, but only because the place he partnered with
was actually secretly producing meth. His assistant is a 50-year-old POC lady named Gina. He also has a pet monkey that is revealed at the end to be his dad, Mojo. –
The Rowdy Rough Boys were a failed spinoff of PPG who eventually run a
dive bar called The Volcano. Butch, the only RRB we see, used to be
engaged to Bubbles, but she dumped him and sold the engagement ring for
drugs. She seduces him again in no time, but only because she thought he
was hiding an evil secret lair. When it is revealed he isn’t, she dumps
him again.-
Henrietta is the villain of the piece. She is a little girl who gets
hired by Jojo to use her mind control robot caterpillars to take control
of the PPG, ruin their reputation, and then Jojo can use arresting them
as good PR. Unfortunately for her, she only hypnotizes Utonium and
Buttercup’s fling Macy. Jojo then orders her to unleash her hundreds of
caterpillars, which enslave the entire city and she forces them to go on
Anti-PPG riots. Buttercup and Bubbles foil her plot by uprooting a telephone pole and use the broken wires to lightly electrocute the hypnotized citizens so the robot caterpillars short circuit.
– The PPG apparently have a grandfather, who Blossom gets along with “despite their political differences.”-
The whole reason the girls are there is to finally get access to their
trust funds, but it’s only $5,000 each, due to Drake investing in real
estate (in 2008), fidget spinners, and cronuts.-
The original cartoon was a sanitized version of their actual exploits.
Buttercup bitches that the dress was too heterosexual, while Bubbles
goes off on how the cartoon whitewashed them. The show also bombed in
Japan, which hilariously stupid for multiple reasons.-
Ted Cruz, Rudy Giuliani, Karen, and the entire Trump family are some of the names Henrietta uses for her caterpillars. Sara wears Britney Spears perfume. Bubbles
references Dirty Dancing multiple times. Drake is a huge Jerry Orbach
fan. Every major social media app gets name dropped at some point,
including LinkedIn. Apparently back in their glory days the PPG were on Total Request Live with Carson Daly and one of them (never specified which one) farted live on-air.
– At one point, the girls talk about how one reason why Sara and Drake split up is because Drake is terrible in bed.-
I don’t know how much money they expected CW to give them to film this
pilot, but man, is it ambitious. There’s a giant monster, a giant mech
piloted by Mojo, a living swamp monster thing, hundreds of robot
caterpillars, multiple evil labs, Mojo’s mountain observatory, multiple
mass riots, a scene where Buttercup and Bubbles hover while holding and
telephone pole they uprooted, multiple scenes where the PPG fling guys
through walls, and Bubbles/Buttercup use flight/super speed almost as
much as the original cartoon. This script would probably have cost as
much as the big Arrowverse crossovers.
What in the actual fuck.
Yeah, it’s easy to see why that wasn’t considered dark and gritty enough![one positive thing I will say: I could sort of see it working out in a sort of Pushing Daisies way? But that’s a very narrow target to try to hit, and not a commercially viable one…]
Sara Bellum was Drake’s girlfriend for 9 years and the surrogate mom of the girls. Also she actually doesn’t have a head.
JESUS, that is bad…Amibitious, as you say. But…bad. This is the script writing of a sheltered white man who just started acknowledging reality but his childhood kept pressuring him.
The script was written by Diablo Cody so your criticism doesn’t make a lot of sense.
GAH! I almost forgot. Jojo says that his pet monkey should be helping with voters, but Gina says that it’s not fashionable post-Harambe.
Yes, that is an actual thing said in the script.
Also, Bubbles goes fully valley girl at points, saying stuff like “mish,” “potench,” and “move-on-dot-org.”
Jesus Christ, who comes up with this shit?
Wow, that really sounds like a lot of yuch.
Mother of God. I had read a few excerpts but… wow, my mind was not prepared for this.I mean, everything sounds atrocious, but the bit about the actual cartoon being a sanitized version that they hate is really the icing on the cake, just a perfect “fuck you” to anyone who liked the show.
That sounds like almost every decision was made to go against what I liked about the original series.Are there any PPG fans reading this and going, “Yes! That’s exactly what I want from a Powerpuff Girls reboot!”?
Imo, PPG isn’t the type of show that deserves a live-action ‘sequel’. In its early years, the cartoon surprisingly handled its adult-themes well, such as Him as a character. This pilot script is…ugh.
I don’t want a Powerpuff Girls “reboot”.If you enjoyed the cartoon back in the day, you probably don’t want a reboot either.
I would be happy with new Powerpuff Girls animated episodes, if they followed along with the originals. I would also be content if they simply reran the originals.
Well now I HAVE to see it.
I want this show.
Going to say, that all sounds really cool.It’s grown up and mature with something that it actually wants to say about the world, about viewing characters.And I’d 100% sure CW got cold feet because they just want fan fiction candy for fans and not an actual series that’s trying to say something.
Except the show is still baked in camp. Utonium is first alerted to danger when a specific two block radius of houses lose their internet, which he attributes to aliens. When Bubbles is making out with Butch in order to gain access to the “Keep Out” door, Buttercup throws a guy through the door, which shows it just houses cleaning chemicals. The main crux of the bad guys is their robot caterpillars worming their way into people’s brains. Jojo would fit right in with the 60’s Batman series. The girls still share a bed when they return home. I forgot to mention it, but Fuzzy Lumpkins also appears, and Bubbles even uses his name as a swear word.
Why call it Powerpuff Girls then? Let Powerpuff Girls be Powerpuff Girls not something different. That can still be a thing but another thing.
Well Diablo Cody was never much for subtlety.
Never watched Powerpuff girls but everything about that script makes me want to see it more. If they ended up making Batman ‘66 with Dove Cameron and Chole Bennet I’d watch every episode, possibly twice. Now it sounds like they’re actually trying to make it more grim n’ gritty, I just want weird.
The only thing I actually like about this is the reveal that ‘Jojo’ is touting around an actual monkey who turns out to be his dad.
I’ll be honest. The rest of the script is lots and lots of awful, but Jojo is largely a lot of fun. He actually kind of works as a fusion of Mojo Jojo and The Mayor from the original cartoon. If this actually made it to air intact, he’d likely be considered the only good thing.
Worst part is…it sounds good…but then the further you go into your description…the worse it gets.
Woof.
You’ve got be fucking me. You just made this all up. It’s a fever dream of YEAH BUT ADULLLLLT fan fic.
To paraphrase Stewart Lee, it’s like the writer of this pilot is an absolute genius, except that unfortunately the only thing they’re a genius in is doing things that will specifically annoy anyone who likes the Powerpuff Girls.
Yeah, sure, that all makes sense.
I mean, there’s no way Buttercup isn’t a butch lesbian – but some of the rest of that stuff is stupid.
Thanks for this! I read the first twenty pages (for any skeptics, this guy is telling the truth 100%!) and had to stop there.Take issues with its massive reworking of the source material all you want, but its biggest sins were just being fucking boring and utterly unfunny.
*vomits*
well, now i need to go watch the powerpuff girls movie to get these images out of my head.
As someone who grew up with the classic PPG cartoon as a kid in grade school, I hate that the CW is doing this to one of my favorite childhood cartoons. I really do. I hope these writers aren’t proud of themselves. I hope it tanks and gets canceled before it can get renewed for a second season. I actually listened to a Youtuber called ShadowStreak read both parts of this script. I both cringed in horror at the WRONGNESS of it all and laughed hysterically at the stupidity of it. I’ve read PPG fanfic written by 13 year olds in this fandom that was FAR better than that pile of horseshit script I read written by so-called professionals! The classic cartoon wasn’t perfect. Sometimes morals came across as flat or warped. However, it had heart. It had characters that were relatable and sweet most of the time. It had entertaining villains like Mojo Jojo and HIM, who could be both terrifying and/or hilarious. Professor Utonium and the three girls generally had very positive and heartwarming platonic FAMILY bonds with each other in the narrative. This reboot is taking away all that fun, innocence, and optimism from the original, and I hate it.
Am I the only one that views the Netflix Sabrina as a comedy? Are they going to try and make it, like that? Fucked up, but winking to the audience?
When CW announced the show I was worried it would be a superhero version of Riverdale, and I’m now convinced that’s exactly what we’ll get. If Nancy Drew was CW’s answer to Stranger Things, is PPG going to be their Umbrella Academy?
I have SO MANY questions and I REALLY want to see that crappy Pilot. Maybe it will end up on YouTube, some day.
There’s a lot more to process here than I probably would have imagined when it comes to The Powerpuff Girls.
“In this case, we felt, let’s take a step back, and go back to the drawing board. Because this is a powerful property, it has engaged a lot of interest, and we want to get it right before we put it out.” I never watched the original show, but this kind of statement makes me cringe and feel bad for the fans. I am sure whatever marketing person wrote that thinks it appeals to the consumer and the shareholders, but it is really only designed for the latter and lets the consumer know firmly where they stand: as a faceless source of statistics that the CW can present to advertisers to leverage a higher price for ad space. It seems like the original show had a pretty light tone too, so scrapping that in favor of Grim and Gritty is… a choice.
So, the original show was mostly fun, but it had dark moments too. One episode had the girls accidentally travel to the future where Townsville was destroyed and Him became so powerful the girls couldn’t hope to fight back. Another had an obsessed collector capture the PPG and place them in action figure bubble packaging in order to complete his collection. There was a cop who was so corrupt he was killed off at the end of his only episode. The show was also EXTREMELY violent. No matter what the problem of the day was, it almost always ended with the girls punching the living daylights out of the bad guy before throwing him in jail. And if one or more of the girls were pissed, the bad guy will typically find themselves drooling on the floor with their limbs bent in unnatural ways. One episode was so violent it made Man of Steel look like Teletubbies.
We need to keep smothering this baby in the crib. We can do this, gang.
You mean more hardcore than this?!
A guy named “Pedowitz” wants to reboot a show about kindergarten-age superhero girls. Just throwing that out there.
They shortened the name at Ellis Island from, “Pedowitzkindersnatcher.”
As the diehard Nancy Drew fan, this leaked script seems like the early episodes of the show, before it quite got its footing. A little too “edgy”, without the right balance of mature and heartfelt that’s made the show great. I can see how we get there from this pilot, but it’ll definitely take some work.
From the leaked script (if it’s true), it looks like the CW’s just gonna keep acquiring kids’ stuff and attempting to make a new Riverdale. If this show never comes back from being “indeterminately shelved”, I’m sure there will be some other clean/fun property run through that grimy filter soon.
From a lot of script details it looks like this is the CW doing Umbrella Academy by way of Riverdale. So I guess next is… I don’t know, 13 Reasons Why but Doug? Dexter’s Lab but Breaking Bad? Let’s all theorize on what Riverdale’s success may have unleashed on this world.
The thing that gets me about this version, along with the 2016 reboot, is the absolute withering contempt that the creators clearly have for the viewer. The screen-grabs I’ve seen of the pilot script are just dripping with hate for the original show, the original fans, and arguably even the pilot itself.
All I remember from the 2016 version were tons of jokes about smart phones, because that’s what the kids are into (?). “ISN’T THIS FUNNY?! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINING?? LAUGH YOU SHEEP!”
For as wild as the plots on Riverdale are, it clearly must’ve been a “lightning in a bottle” situation. I also think that Riverdale worked because no one really knew much about Archie other than he’s in a love triangle with Betty and Veronica ( and maybe Jughead is also around) so it’s more of a blank slate. That and the leaked script sounds absolutely nightmarish.
So, I don’t think it’s quite “lightning in a bottle”, because Nancy Drew has also worked, and it’s probably pretty similar to Riverdale in that people don’t know much more than “girl detective”; it’s not like the plotlines on Nancy Drew were grounded–that show has had *multiple* ghost-possessions, one of which is an ongoing, major plot point. The issue is that you have to work at it, and make it more than just “kid character is grown up and swears and is jaded and has sex”, which kind of seems like what this pilot was (and what Nancy Drew struggled with at first). It’s a balance, and it requires work to get it right.
I wouldn’t describe Nancy Drew as dark and no-nonsense. They did a pheromones plot a few episodes back and another one with a mind-wipe storyline that had a lot of funny elements. It’s not fluffy or slapstick but I’m not going 60 minutes without laughing either.
Exactly my point. It’s more mature and adult, but there’s humor as well. It’s a balancing act on these types of shows.
“The head of the CW no longer wants the Powerpuff girls’ recipe to include sugar, spice, and everything nice. It needs to include grit, reality, and an edgier side of Bubbles, Blossom, and Buttercup Utonium dammit …The girls are twenty-somethings now, they’re jaded and traumatized.”Oh boy! This guy has completely misidentified what the problem with that pilot script was, and is going to instruct the showrunners to make it even worse by leaning harder into the ill-conceived “disillusioned former superheroes” premise! If this thing even ends up getting made, looks like we’re in for an all-time debacle!
It’s being reworked because it was too campy & not grounded enough in reality? Why would anyone want Powerpuff Girls to be realistic? A live action Powerpuff Girls adaptation should be less Riverdale & more Legends Of Tomorrow.
There were assorted complaints about the script, but those could be
minimized with the right execution. A campy tone with zippy pacing could
make for a fun spoof of grimdark reboots. That’d be the best case
scenario for this dubious idea. If played straight, however, it’s yet
another entry in the crowded grimdark superhero TV pantheon.
https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2021/06/12/tv-stuff-preemptive-powerpuff/