Sugar, spice, and everything nice — plus a cast list that sounds too good to be true. A viral trailer for a "Powerpuff Girls Live-Action Movie (2026)" has been making the rounds, promising Jenna Ortega as Buttercup, Dove Cameron as Bubbles, and Pedro Pascal as Professor Utonium, all under the Warner Bros. banner. It looks slick. It sounds epic. There's just one problem: none of it is real these are fan made.

Let's sort the Chemical X from the tap water.

The viral trailer is fan-made

There is no officially announced Powerpuff Girls live-action movie for 2026. No Warner Bros. press release, no production listing, no casting announcement — nothing. The trailer is a fan-made concept piece, the same genre of AI-assisted "what if" video that keeps the internet's rumor mill spinning. The cast list is fantasy casting, not a call sheet.

And honestly? As fantasy casting it kind of rips. Jenna Ortega has exactly the feral energy Buttercup needs, and Pedro Pascal as the girls' gentle scientist dad is the kind of wholesome chaos the internet was built for. But a great concept trailer is not a movie and maybe in future it will be announced.

The live-action project that actually existed

Here's the part that's 100% real — and honestly stranger than the fan trailer. The CW really did develop a live-action Powerpuff Girls series. Announced in 2020, it cast Chloe Bennet as Blossom, Dove Cameron as Bubbles, Yana Perrault as Buttercup, and Donald Faison as Professor Utonium, with Juno writer Diablo Cody on scripting duties and Greg Berlanti producing.

The concept: the girls as disillusioned twenty-somethings, resenting the childhood they lost to fighting crime. Dark, edgy, very CW. The pilot was filmed — and the network hated it. CW's then-chairman called it "too campy," the show was sent back for reworking, Chloe Bennet exited, and in 2023 the whole thing was quietly cancelled.

Very Disappointment for powerpuff series fans.

The leaked trailer that proved it was real

In a wild coda, a three-and-a-half-minute trailer for the scrapped pilot leaked online in September 2026 via a "lost media" YouTube channel — and Warner Bros. hit it with a copyright takedown within hours, which is about as close to confirmation as Hollywood gets. The CW later confirmed the footage was authentic but "never meant for public release."

So the footage exists. The show doesn't. Classic.

Could a real movie still happen?

Warner Bros. owns the property outright, and in an era where every millennial cartoon is getting the live-action treatment, you'd be foolish to say "never." But as of right now, there is zero official movement on a Powerpuff Girls movie — live-action or otherwise. Anyone telling you Jenna Ortega has signed on is selling you a concept trailer.

The verdict

The 2026 "movie" is fan fiction with great taste in casting. The real story — a genuinely produced pilot that died in development hell and leaked three years later — is honestly more interesting. Townsville's finest remain, for now, animated.