The CW reworking Powerpuff Girls pilot because first version was a 'miss' that came out 'too campy'

The city of Townsville will need to wait a little longer to be saved — and now we finally know why. According to Deadline, the reason for the Powerpuff pilot getting retooled instead of being picked up to go to series so it can premiere as part of this fall's line-up is because it simply didn't work.

"The reason we do pilots is sometimes things miss, this was just a miss," said The CW's CEO Mark Pedowitz during the network's upfront press call on Tuesday. "We believe in the cast completely, we believe in Diablo and Heather, the writers… in this case, the pilot didn’t work."

He then went on to note the interest in the project, and the popularity of the original animated Cartoon Network series that the show will be a live-action sequel to, stating that it needs to do justice to the trio of superheroes at its heart. And while he didn't share any specifics about what needed to be reworked.

"We see there [are] enough elements in there, so we wanted to give it another shot," Pedowitz said. "Tonally, it might have felt a little too campy, and didn’t feel as rooted in reality as it might have felt."

He continued, "You learn things and you test things out. 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." 

In the original Powerpuff Girls cartoon, which was created by Craig McCracken, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup were created by accident when their adopted dad Professor Utonium accidentally combined a bunch of ingredients with Chemical X in his lab. Though only in kindergarten, the sisters were constantly fighting against crime and other issues that arose in their small city. The new series is meant to catch up with them decades later as twenty-somethings who've since grown disillusioned with the world and resent having to lose their childhoods to fighting crime.

So far the show's main cast — Chloe Bennet (Blossom), Dove Cameron (Bubbles), Yana Perrault (Buttercup) and Donald Faison (Professor Utonium) — all remain attached to the project, along with the rest of the cast and creative team as the show itself goes back to the drawing board.

No air date has been set for the show yet.