Dove Cameron says The CW's Powerpuff Girls live-action show was going to be reworked anyway

We were extremely skeptical of The CW’s live-action Powerpuff Girls show from the start. The plot was going to turn the beloved Cartoon Network heroes into gritty, Riverdale-type characters who were described as “disillusioned twenty-somethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime fighting.” And then came the set pictures. The outfits looked like cheap Halloween costumes and confirmed our worst fears that it’d be a shitshow. To make matters worse, the pilot script leaked and it wasn’t received favorably, to say the least. But instead of canceling the show outright, The CW decided to rework the pilot. Many thought the decision came after receiving so many negative reactions, but Dove Cameron, who is set to play Bubbles, says the network was already thinking about re-shooting and rewriting the show.

In an interview with ET’s Katie Krause, Cameron explains what prompted the series to be reworked. “They didn’t decide to rework the pilot because the script leaked. I just need to say that that wasn’t what happened. We had to reshoot it anyway for a couple of reasons,” she says. “It’s a really big piece of IP, and it’s tonally very specific. Like getting it right, making everybody happy, and also making sure that it translates. It’s so specific. To modernize it and to make it fit like, a bunch of different things that don’t normally go together, it’s just kind of like a puzzle piece.” She adds, “I think the script is going to get another whack, and it’s just going to be a slightly different approach but everything else is going to stay the same.”

It’s hard to know if this Powerpuff Girls live-action show will actually get to be good—or if it’ll even air on the network after all. But the leaked script did feel like a Diablo Cody parody instead of an actual script written by the Oscar-winning screenwriter herself. Here’s hoping Cody taps into her Jennifer’s Body and Juno magic to save the show.