Live-Action Powerpuff Girls, Diggle’s Justice U Among Pre-Nexstar Projects No Longer in Development at The CW
Powerpuff is officially powered down.
A live-action take on the Powerpuff Girls is no longer being redeveloped at The CW, TVLine has confirmed. The same goes for the Arrowverse offshoot Justice U, a female-led Zorro series, Jake Chang (which was to be based on a new-ish Archie Comics character), or any other prospective series left over from former CW president Mark Pedowitz’s regime.
“We’ve already given those back to the studios,” Brad Schwartz, The CW’s President of Entertainment, told TVLine after the network’s Thursday morning Upfront presentation, “so they’re free to develop those and sell them anywhere.”
Schwartz had just detailed for the press a development slate curated by Nexstar, The CW’s owner of the last seven months, which includes a Librarians sequel series, The Great American Bakeover (in which Nancy Birtwhistle makes over struggling bakeries), the self-explanatory Patti Stanger: Millionaire Matchmaker, and The Force (an unscripted procedural à la COPS).
Of the abandoned projects from Pedowitz’s tenure at The CW, a pilot for Powerpuff — starring Chloe Bennet, Dove Cameron, Yana Perrault, Donald Faison and others — was filmed in early 2021, but it wasn’t picked up to series.
“Sometimes things miss, and this was just a miss,” Pedowitz explained to reporters in May 2021. “Tonally, it might have felt a little too campy. It didn’t feel as rooted in reality as it might have. But again, you learn things when you test things out. And in this case, we felt like, ‘Let’s take a step back and go back to the drawing board.’”
In Justice U, David Ramsey would have reprised his role as Arrow‘s John Diggle, who after spending years fighting alongside masked heroes “embarks on a new mission to recruit five young meta humans to live undercover as freshmen at a prestigious university.” As recently as October, Ramsey had told TVLine, “we’re on the second draft of a script, and we just closed the deal on a writer…. It’s still in development, and we’re moving forward.”
The female-led Zorro series, which hails from filmmaker Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids) and writer-director Rebecca Rodriguez (Snowpiercer, Doom Patrol), had previously been pursued/bailed on at NBC. It was put into development at The CW in February 2022, the same time as Gotham Knights, Walker Independence and The Winchesters (all of which got green lights).
Lastly, Jake Chang was put into development last June, and was described as is an Asian-American–led mystery following the titular 16-year-old private investigator as he navigates the diverse worlds of his ever-gentrifying home of Chinatown.
TVLine has reached out to the respective studios behind each of the above for comment on their statuses.
Which of these projects are you saddest to see fall by the wayside?
Dear Nexstar,
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Not feeling you. This is where we part ways. Good luck living on the cheap.
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Sincerely,
The CW audience
🤣🤣🤣
P.S. Good luck getting a 0.0 demo rating
How is that different from the old CW? ;)
Say it louder for the CW fans in the back.
I’m with you, assuming Superman & Lois is cancelled.
Yeah I figured as much due to lack of info over many months
Yeah we get it, they only want crap they can make for cheap or international shows they can license for cheap because no one else wants them
What about Babylon 5?
It’s getting a direct-to-dvd animated movie with the og cast.
That is seperate from the reboot. Fair to assume that the reboot has been released back to Warner Bros. just like the rest of these have. Maybe it will be developed elsewhere, maybe not.
JMS said on Twitter the reboot is still alive and writing is just on hold because of the strike.
While not specifically mentioned in the article, I think it is safe to assume that the B5 reboot has gone back to WB based on the recent tweets by Joe. Now we will just have to wait for the strike(s) to end.
Powerpuff should be kept in development by the studio.
It was for 3 years it just wasn’t meant to be
All for reruns of a Roku Channel Original Series LOL
About time! An official confirmation. I been knew those were dead.
A campy live action Powerpuff Girls…
…..this was a bad thing…..why, exactly?
In all fairness the leaked pilot script was atrocious (I think to remember it had even explicit sexual overtones…).
But it could have been improved, of course. Guess they weren’t able to.
Unlike some of the explicit overtones from the cartoon?
The cartoon had sex scenes too ?!
CW getting nothing but 0.0 on everything next season but All American and Walker
Aww man, I was actually really looking forward to Powerpuff! A live-action Powerpuff Girls written by Diablo Cody? That SHOULD be campy and not rooted in reality! Have they seen the show’s villains? Mojo Jojo, HIM and Fuzzy Lumpkins would be ridiculous in live-action and I think that’s what would have made it so much fun
I agree
Please explain this to me. In the year 2023, after all the headlines in the last couple of years, Nextstar thinks naming a ‘Cops-like’ show called ‘The Force’ is a good idea?!? Really. No. Just….no.
I guess they have a stereotypical view of golf-watchers.
Blame CW, nexstar only had 2 left over pilots in any sort of development and it was script only, that was Baylon 5 and zorro, most of these are pilots cw had passed on over last 3 yrs, B5, was only around because it was a hbo max/cw deal leaving zorro as loan pilot.
Powerpuff reboot looked like a mess. Thank goodness they didn’t keep it.
Except for the new Librarians (and I really hope that the CW doesn’t mess that up), the new CW development line-up sounds incredibly worse than the shows they’ve rejected. I hope the rejected shows find new homes…
I’m a veteran of many a write-in campaign and I really wish there was someone we could write to about all of this….
I’m pretty sure that the fact that it will be Nexstar’s CW making the show, The new Librarians will be just that – a series showing endless scenes of people sitting in a library.
LOL! Couldn’t agree more !
Can we please just close the CW down? Does it actually exist for a real entertainment purpose anymore? It’s big idea is a Librarians sequel??? A sequel to a sequel series?
Here, Here, I’m with you, man. Let’s close down the CW! There’s nothing left to watch on that network. If I wanted to watch water dripping, I’d pull up a chair in front of my kitchen faucet.
Next year there won’t be an upfront presentation because Nobody will care about The CW anymore.
What do you mean that nobody will care about the CW? That rich Arab prince and that whiney criminal running for president who own the golf tournament the on the CW will care. But they’ll be too busy crying about the loss of money they thought they’d get.
Well the assholes at THE C W are up to no good once again; completely clueless to what viewers like and care about. Arrow, legacies, and supernatural were excellent dramas and a cult following existed. It seems like anything close these great dramas terrifies them to death!!!.
I’m gutted these projects have been scrapped indefinitely. Especially the Powerpuff Girls reboot! And Justice U, as well. The CW is being a real let down at the moment!
But I really hope other TV companies could pick up these projects like Netflix or Paramount+.
I really don’t think it’s fair these shows shouldn’t see the light of day because the CW has either creative disagreement or budget cuts, or whatever reason they have for scrapping these cool shows.
Can’t speak to those other shows but the script for the Powerpuff Girls reboot was god-awful! They turned Blossom into an NLOG, made Bubbles a superficial and self-centered brat, Buttercup was a lesbian stereotype, and worst of all they turned the Professor into an abusive d-bag.
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Trust me, you should be glad it’s dead and buried.
It won’t stop until they take everything that wasn’t live-action and turn it into a live-action reboot … And take everything that was live action and reboot it. Ugh, please stop. Glad those didn’t work out. Stop ruining our favorite things, come up with new ideas, y’all suck
I’m personally THRILLED that the Power Puff Pilots dead. So this was good news for me. That pilot stood to pervert a wholesome girl power kids show in the worst way and I’m glad the universe felt how badly it was not asked for.
I’m personally THRILLED that Power Puffs Pilot died. I haven’t been that angry at a live action reboot since the westernized Death Note. The audacity
Frankly, the project never made any sense at all.
BEST NEWS EVER!!! Read the leaked script and as a huge PPG fan it was one of the most idiotic scripts I have ever read!! Absolute trash and a total insult to Powerpuff Girls.
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When will Hollywood learn that they need to get people who loves respects the source material to write adaptations?!?!
I don’t suppose they ever did find a replacement for blossom did they?
And I am very curious if they were ever going to have the rogues gallery show up for real, not human counterparts like some of these adaptations end up being.