Yesterday, our Princess Weekes reported that the live-action Powerpuff Girls reboot, Powerpuff (I’m still salty that it’s not called Townsville), is being delayed. While Chloe Bennet (Blossom), Dove Cameron (Bubbles), Yana Perrault (Buttercup), and Donald Faison (Professor Utonium) will remain on the project along with the writers and producers, the series is going to be reworked and re-piloted off-cycle.
The reason behind this is unknown but methinks the collective feedback of “dear God why” from every corner of the Internet may have had something to do with it.
There weren’t too many fans of the “disillusioned twenty-somethings” premise and the outfits that may or may not have made Party City trend for a day. The consensus ranged from “decimate it” to “lol what a mess is this real omfg lol.”
To be fair, there was also some “I don’t mind the premise just take the Powerpuff Girl label off of it.” The idea of superheroines realizing their childhood was garbage because all they did was fight crime isn’t a bad one, but the Powerpuff Girls had a wonderful father, loved crime-fighting, and still had plenty of cute childhood moments throughout the series. That was kinda the point. They were kids who fought crime but still got to be kids, right down to having a bedtime.
Many (myself included) didn’t understand why we couldn’t just have a fun, brightly colored show where girls got to delight in recess, juice boxes, and being heroines.
Instead of lamenting on that, I’ve been playfully trying to predict what the heck the plot would be for, sigh, Powerpuff. That descent into madness started here.
Then we got character descriptions, which weren’t too far off from what I guessed, which is here.
And now? We have a leaked script!
Supposedly.
Technically, we don’t know if this is the actual script or not, but honestly? Combined with the details we had about “missed opportunity title” Powerpuff + this being a CW production, this script is EXACTLY what I thought it would be.
UPDATE: the leak has received a copyright strike on Twitter so… maybe it was real after all?!
powerpuff girls cw script was copyright striked. pic.twitter.com/ypQqNv4CVa
— ahmad (@writtenbyahmad) May 25, 2021
But that hasn’t stopped it from spreading, after all, this script is HARDCORE!
The script leaks for this Powerpuff Girls reboot are the worst thing I’ve read this month pic.twitter.com/I7CrPewGc4
— Xavier’s Online (@xaviersonline) May 25, 2021
Here are my previous predictions so we can compare notes:
- Townsville is basically Gotham, like, the depiction of Gotham from Titans. It’s a shithole is what I’m saying. There’s graffiti that reads Sugar, Spice, and Nothing Nice. The city blames the Professor for the state of things because he’s the one who created the girls.
- The Mayor is absolutely corrupt. Has shady dealings with some of the villains from the series. Drinks all the time. Has really let himself go.
- Miss Bellum is the one trying to make things right again. She goes to the Professor for help, sleeps with him (because it’s the CW), and while they’re talking she brings up reuniting the girls. Maybe they get a little clever and her back is to the camera when she seduces the Professor so we don’t see her face? I dunno, that may be giving them too much credit.
- There have been attempts to replicate the formula, recapture the magic to defend the city. It doesn’t take. Maybe the Professor is on a quest to find more Chemical X but alas, it’s just gone. No matter how hard he tries he doesn’t have enough sugar, and there’s nothing nice left in Townsville to pull from.
- Buttercup is a vigilante. She still fights crime in secret but without Blossom and Bubbles to reign her in she’s really violent about it. She has the most contact with the Professor because she’s still fighting crime, but she’s real messy about it. She doesn’t even go by Buttercup anymore.
- Bubbles is an Instagram sensation and absolutely LOVES being a cute blonde, tee hee, pigtails and blue dresses and all. She doesn’t even live in Townsville anymore. She lives in L.A. She’s living the party girl life but comes home to an empty apartment where she stares longingly at a picture of her and her sisters.
- Blossom, since she was the leader, has been taking it the hardest. She’s in the middle of an identity crisis because technically, they were created in a laboratory. Insert a flashback where she yells at the Professor because she wants to be a “real” girl, dammit, not some crimefighting lab experiment on call 24 hours a day! She thinks about this while she’s in bed with one of the Rowdyruff Boys because it’s the CW. He’s annoyed because even if she’s not one of those goodie-two-shoes Powerpuffs anymore it still consumes her. She definitely walks the street in (insert city she lives in now) and feels the urge to stop a purse snatcher or bank robber, her boyfriend having to remind her that she’s walked away from that life. Also, she cut her hair and does everything to distance herself from that Blossom look.
- The big threat that brings them together is major, like, the Professor dies or something. The girls come back together for the funeral and decide to become a team again, but Vigilante Buttercup ain’t got time for Blossom’s rules and Bubbles is tired of not having a say, stuck in the middle of their arguing. She tweets about her annoying sisters often.
- Miss Bellum is the one who assigns them missions and tries to keep them in order.
- The show is NOT called Powerpuff Girls. It’s called Townsville or Chemical X or something like that.
- Catchphrase: get puffed.
I apologize, because in my wacky predictions I forgot that annoying thing modern reboots do where they shoehorn in as many social media mentions/modern-day terms as possible. I also forgot the need they have to mention some classic movie (in this case Dirty Dancing) so you can feel old when you watch it.
Or you can wonder what year the script was written in because suddenly we’re talking about Harambe.
WHAT YEAR WAS THIS WRITTEN pic.twitter.com/SBezn5oEJo
— New Clever Name Now That I’m Going Outside Again (@fawfulator) May 25, 2021
Get it? Because Jojo is a monkey and Harambe is … yeah, you get it.
UPDATE: This tweet has been deleted, but here’s the Harambe quote:
JOJO: What about my pet monkey! That was meaningful in the last election.
GINA: Post-Harambe. No one cares anymore.
I did not have “threatening to leak nudes” on my live-action Powerpuff Girl bingo card, though. I guess in the whole “disillusioned twenty-somethings who resent their childhood” plot they also decided to, um, playfully have the sisters threaten each other in an extremely violating way?
I DID call Blossom as being the one hit hardest with the whole traumatic childhood angle. Granted, I thought she’d be having an identity crisis because they were created in a laboratory so she’d spiral into “am I a real girl” territory.
What? I can be over-the-top in predicting mess, too.
College freshmen after one semester of psych 101 like: pic.twitter.com/0xCOIj5Cq4
— New Clever Name Now That I’m Going Outside Again (@fawfulator) May 25, 2021
UPDATE: This tweet was also deleted, but here’s the quote:
CLIVE: Babe, you had a messed-up childhood that culminated in a traumatic event. It’s like your therapist says; you needed to go out and make your own way in the world. For the sake of your mental health.
(I’m assuming that event is Blossom killing Mojo, you know, the thing Bubbles had the cheeky response of moveon.org to?)
I did fail to predict the “We are, as the cool kids say, woke.” That’s my bad, I should’ve seen that coming.
reading the leaked powerpuff girls script and i’m mad as hell they’re not airing this because well. i need to see this air on television pic.twitter.com/y8tBpuhRtM
— camryn (@Ioosechange) May 25, 2021
Not wearing a dress because of compulsory heterosexuality.
“She’s not a white man.” Followed by the villain bemoaning reverse discrimination. I see you, Powerpuff, trying to make us hate Jojo on a whole new level. This is gonna be the empowering reboot where we have a privileged villain and girls who are gonna knock him off his high horse, girls who … threaten to leak nudes … of each other…
With everything being reworked, I can’t help but wonder what’s gonna happen to Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup now? Whatever it is, I’m sure one of them will post about it on Insta, hashtag Powerpuff.
(Image: The CW)
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