The leaked trailer for the live-action Powerpuff Girls series, which no one asked for, has hit the internet, and it’s easy to see why this CW series was canceled without a premiere.
Back in 2020, The CW announced plans for a live-action adaptation of the beloved animated series, raising eyebrows and skepticism across the board. Fast forward to 2021, and after filming a pilot starring Chloe Bennet, Dove Cameron, Yana Perrault, and Donald Faison, the project was unceremoniously shelved.
Now, thanks to some enterprising leakers, footage from the ill-fated series has surfaced on YouTube, and it’s as chaotic as you might expect.
Sources at The CW have confirmed that the footage is indeed real, although a final trailer was never put together before the series was axed. Rumor has it that the network was in the process of assembling a trailer for upfronts when the cancellation came down, but the leaked footage likely wouldn’t have met CW’s standards.
The trailer introduces us to Bennet as Blossom, Cameron as Bubbles, Perrault as Buttercup, and Faison as Professor Drake Utonium, the man behind the trio of pint-sized superheroes.
The footage dives into the girls’ rise to fame, showcasing their lives as young adults. But instead of the charming innocence of the original series, we get a rather different vibe: Blossom is “constantly stressed,” Bubbles is “constantly drinking” (and even throws up in a trash can), and Buttercup is, well, “constantly rebellious.”
Here is the cursed trailer:
While the live-action PowerPuff Girls trailer is undeniably entertaining in its absurdity, it feels more like an SNL skit than a serious series. It misses the essence of the original show, which revolved around the Professor’s attempt to create three normal girls who ended up with superpowers.
