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.