Live-Action 'Powerpuff Girls' Show In The Works At The CW

Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup may be heading back to TV, but in a way you've never seen them before: in live-action.

The CW is reportedly developing a live-action Powerpuff Girls sequel series, which takes place years after the events of the Cartoon Network animated show. Oscar winner Diablo Cody (Juno) is writing and executive producing, and Greg Berlanti, the architect of The CW's Arrowverse and shows like Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, is on board as an executive producer.

Variety has the news about a live-action sequel series based on The Powerpuff Girls, as well as a description of what we can expect if the show moves forward:

In the updated version of the series, the titular superheroes are now 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 original series was created by Craig McCracken, and it aired on Cartoon Network from 1998 until 2005, releasing 78 episodes over six seasons. The show followed three kindergarten-aged girls who live with their father, Professor Utonium. He had attempted to engineer the ideal little girl with a mixture of "sugar, spice, and everything nice," but accidentally included a dose of Chemical X, imbuing the girls with superhuman abilities like flight, super strength, and more. Here's the animated show's intro and theme music, which may briefly fling some of you of a certain age right back into your childhoods watching Saturday morning cartoons:

This new version, which comes from Warner Bros. TV, is the brainchild of Diablo Cody – who won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for Juno and also wrote Jennifer's Body, Young Adult, Tully, and TV shows like One Mississippi and The United States of Tara – and Heather Regnier, who has writing credits on shows like Veronica Mars, Sleepy Hollow, iZombie, and Falling Skies.

A huge part of The Powerpuff Girls' appeal was its bubbly animation style, which purposefully clashed with the violent fights the girls would often get into in order to save their city from encroaching villains or super-sized bad guys. Will this show be interested in trying to recapture those large-scale fight scenes in live-action, or will it just be a stripped-back, action-free drama about these girls as young women?

Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, and David Madden will executive produce via Berlanti Productions. Berlanti and Schecter have proven to be especially adept at creating compelling, meme-worthy content aimed at teen audiences, and they've been behind several resurrections of recognizable properties already. In other words, with the creative team assembled here, they might all actually be able to pull this off.