The CW has released the first official image of its live-action PowerPuff Girls TV series.
Riding on the coattails of Netflix’s Winx adaptation, PowerPuff (as it’s simply titled) promises to deliver superhero action alongside the usual serving of CW drama.
Check out the new image as reported by Variety below:
The CW series stars Chloe Bennet as Blossom, Dove Cameron as Bubbles, and Yana Perrault as Buttercup. Alongside them stars Scrubs‘ Donald Faison as Professor Drake Utonium. Nicholas Podany plays villain Joseph “Jojo” Mondel Jr. while Robyn Lively plays Sara Bellum, head of S.H.U.S.H.’s research division.
PowerPuff gives a gritty spin on its cartoon source material. The three PowerPuff Girls are twenty-somethings when the series begins, haunted by their crime-fighting past. The series sees the girls reunite to save the world once more. Don’t expect to see their infamously cheesy superhero garb, though, outside from flashbacks.
PowerPuff is the latest attempt by TV networks to adapt children’s properties for more mature audiences. This year’s Fate: The Winx Saga is the most recent attempt at this trend. Series creator Brian Young endeavored to “ground this show in real character moments, things that any audience member would relate to”. Young did away with the lead characters’ designs because but “nobody looks like that. It was the most important thing to me that every kid can feel like they see themselves in it … Real girls, real people.”
This sentiment apparently worked – Fate was a success. The show peaked at #2 on Nielsen’s Streaming Charts on the week of January 25 with 918 million minutes in viewership. This was just under Bridgerton which accumulated 936 million. Unfortunately, critics weren’t as enthusiastic, with Rotten Tomatoes‘ consensus describing the 6-episode first season as “flat, flimsy and forgettable”. Regardless, a second season was ordered in February.
If the Powers-That-Be get their heads together, PowerPuff could be as phenomenal as Fate or Riverdale.
