Diablo Cody Says She's Bummed That Her Live-Action POWERPUFF GIRLS Was Scrapped: "We Wanted to Do Something Kind of Weird"

Last summer, it was announced that the live-action Powerpuff Girls series that was in the works at The CW had been scrapped. The Powerpuff Girls would have caught up with Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, “who used to be America’s pint-sized superheroes but now are disillusioned twentysomethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime-fighting. Will they agree to reunite now that the world needs them more than ever?”

The cast included Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Chloe Bennet as Blossom, Descendants‘ Dove Cameron as Bubbles, Broadway vet Yana Perrault as Buttercup, and Scrubs‘ Donald Faison as Professor Utonium.

Academy Award-winning writer Diablo Cody (Juno) was the writer on the project, and she expressed her sadness in the show’s dissolvement in a recent interview with The Wrap, where she stated:

“There were honestly a lot of issues. It’s a bummer. I was really bummed out about that. Heather Regnier and I, who created it together, we were very, very excited about that show. But it just didn’t pan out. And sometimes things just don’t. I mean, to be honest, like, most of the time, things don’t.”

Little was really known about the plot of Powerpuff, beyond the logline shared above, but apparently, it was about more than just losing their younger years.

“So the idea was that the Powerpuff Girls were adults, and they were really disillusioned because they felt that they had almost been exploited, like child stars, when they were young superheroes. And so they hadn’t really used their powers in years. And then Townsville was under attack once again, and they realized that they had to get over their differences and reunite.”

Cody notes that it was “fun” to write about the trio at this age and figure out how they’d handle Gen Z problems, but that it did make things harder, in terms of getting the show out of the gate.

“I think just in general, making the Powerpuff Girls adults was a challenge, because it would have probably been easier to just do a straight live-action adaptation of the existing show. But we wanted to do something kind of weird.”

It seems that weirdness didn’t translate for the network execs though as, in 2021, The CW’s then-chairman and CEO Mark Pedowitz said the pilot that was shot “felt a little too campy.” Cody added that, like with any beloved piece of IP, “there’s fan service involved,” and trying to make fans of the original happy “definitely adds a whole layer of difficulty to it” — one that was “tricky” to navigate.

As far as that script that purportedly leaked online? The writer was unaware of that at the time of this conversation, but she’d caution that there were a lot of versions of her and Regnier’s scripts.

Cody said:

“Chances are, there’s so many drafts, and so many different versions of scripts by the time that they go to production, that it’s possible that what leaked was maybe — I mean, I guess it could have been the shooting script, but it also could have just been a remnant from development. I don’t know. Because I also wrote, I wrote a half hour version, I wrote an hour version, it was at a streamer, then it was at The CW. So it’s like, there was a lot of iterations of live-action Powerpuff Girls.”

All that said, Cody can see a future where a live-action Powerpuff Girls does hit screens — there’s already an animated reboot in the works, Cody just doesn’t have anything to do with it.

“I would not be surprised if there is a live-action Powerpuff Girls show at some point, but they probably won’t hire me to do it again.”

Cody’s most recent project, the fun upcoming horror rom-com Lisa Frankenstein, hits theaters on February 9.