About

The Powerpuff Girls Live-Action Reboot refers to an in-development, live-action television series based on Cartoon Network's The Powerpuff Girls which reimagines the titular trio as jaded twenty-somethings who are resentful of their childhoods spent crime-fighting. The series, written by Diablo Cody, has been greenlit by the CW network. The idea of the show has drawn intense negative reactions from fans who feel like the darker take on the show goes against its original intent. In March 2025, a leaked trailer for the show starring Chloe Bennet, Dove Cameron, and Yana Perrault as Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup respectively, and actor Donald Faison as Professor Utonium garnered criticism online.

History

On August 24th, 2020, Variety^[1] reported that the CW was "looking" at a grittier, live-action reboot of The Powerpuff Girls which would be produced by Heather Regnier and Diablo Cody. They wrote, "In the updated version of the series, the titular superheroes are now disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime-fighting." On February 9th, 2021, the CW announced that they had greenlit the series, and it would be going into production.^[2]

Online Presence

Reaction to the show's development has been overwhelmingly negative online. After the first announcement of the show's development in August of 2020, Twitter user and YouTuber Little Kuriboh tweeted,^[3] "This makes zero sense if it's real, since the Powerpuff Girls were frequently shown to be enjoying their childhood just fine, despite crime interrupting it often. I feel like half the show is Professor Utonium tryin' to be a good dad to the girls," gaining over 450 retweets and 2,300 likes (shown below, left). User @rosiehoya^[4] tweeted, "No one and I mean absolutely no one has watched the powerpuff girls and thought 'hmmm it would be even better as a live action series,'" gaining over 2,900 retweets and 12,000 likes (shown below, right).

After the announcement that the reboot was greenlit in February of 2021, Twitter users reacted in much the same way. Over two tweets, user @ManiiMade^[5] wrote, "The thing about the whole 'The Powerpuff Girls resent losing their childhood to crime fighting' plotline is that it's admittedly an interesting idea but it doesn't work with the Powerpuff Girls series. Mostly because if you actually watched the series, the girls were still pretty much treated like children and in fact, there were multiple episodes where they couldn't save the day because they were young kids" (shown below, left). User @CailynMurray^[6] wrote, "I swear to god if they make out the professor to be an abusive father in the CW powerpuff girls I’ll loose my shit. He was such a great dad!!! He loved and doted on his daughters!!!!! Why is this making me so heated," gaining over 690 retweets and 6,800 likes (shown below, right).

'Powerpuff Girls' Live Action Reboot Footage Leaked

On March 6th, 2025, Twitter / X^[7] user @EmberOnMain made a post leaked footage from the canceled live-action Powerpuff Girls reboot, gathering over 21,000 likes on a tweet that read, "NEW LEAK | POWERPUFF (This cancelled live-action adaptation of The Powerpuff Girls was meant to air on The CW)." Also on March 6th, X^[8] user @LostMediaBuster posted a trailer for the canceled CW Powerpuff Girls reboot, gathering over 74,000 likes in a day. Both posts were removed for copyright violations within ten hours. A re-upload is shown below.

Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? We really dodged a bullet with this Powerpuff Girl live-action reboot. #ThisCantBeReal pic.twitter.com/ziZdBBCJIk

— TraditionalAnimation (@Traditional2D) March 6, 2025

The trailer showed actresses Chloe Bennet, Dove Cameron, and Yana Perrault as Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup respectively, and actor Donald Faison as Professor Utonium.

Several internet users reacted to the leaked footage from the scrapped reboot, with X^[9] user @greatgavino12 tweeting a low-quality GIF of Nostalgia Critic and Miranda Sings, among others, flying and running. The post read, "The Powerpuff Girls throughout most of the trailer," gathering over 4,000 likes in a day.

Also on March 6th, X users @NebsGoodTakes^[10] and @Browntable_Ent^[11] posted two reactions to the trailer, one writing, "I would've watched all 8 seasons unfortunately," and the other, "Dude this is the worst thing I've ever seen, it has legitimately zero redeeming qualities." Both tweets gathered over 50,000 likes in a day.

Search Interest

External References