All Pilots In Development At The CW Before The Nexstar Purchase Have Been Dropped
No Justice U, no Zorro, and indeed, no Powerpuff
The CW unveiled its fall schedule on Thursday. All American is the only holdover that made it, staying on Mondays and paired with semi-rescue 61st Street. Tuesdays are an imported comedy block. it put Sullivan’s Crossing and The Spencer Sisters together on Wednesdays, Thursdays have been given to FBoy Island, while Fridays and Saturdays, having no scripted content already, are actually untouched. Sundays have gotten Spike’s I Am documentary film series, seemingly agreeing with ABC to put movies there this fall. Superman & Lois, Gotham Knights, and All American: Homecoming are still on the bubble. But for everything that had been in development since before Nexstar’s purchase of the network, their bubble popped.
These prospective series left over from the previous regime include a new Arrowverse spinoff with David Ramsey as John Diggle called Justice U, a female-led Zorro series, Jake Chang, based on a more recently introduced Archie character, and the widely derided, highly despised live-action Powerpuff Girls adaptation simply titled Powerpuff. None of them are going forward at the network. The latter starred Chloe Bennet, Dove Cameron and Yana Perrault as Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup respectively, and Donald Faison as Professor Utonium. There was a lot wrong with it, so much that it had to be redeveloped, though the public and the execs seemed to be on different pages about what was wrong, especially tonally. Previous president Mark Pedowitz called it too campy while the public saw it as being tryhard edgy.
Justice U would’ve seen John Diggle after spending years fighting alongside Teams Arrow and Flash and the Legends, embark on a new mission to “recruit five young metahumans to live undercover as freshmen at a prestigious university.” As recently as October, Ramsey had told TVLine it was still in motion on a second draft and with a newly-hired writer. The female-led Zorro series, which comes from Spy Kids, Sin City, and Alita: Battle Angel director Robert Rodriguez and writer-director Rebecca Rodriguez, who had experience on Doom Patrol, had landed at The CW in February after an unsuccessful development at NBC. Jake Chang was put into development last June. It was described as a mystery following Chang, a 16-year-old Asian-American private investigator as he discovers the diverse worlds of his ever-gentrifying Chinatown home.
Strangely, while implied by being all-encompassing, the Babylon 5 reimagining, announced to be in development in September 2021, does not get an explicit mention despite being such a high-profile project. Franchise creator J. Michael Straczynski hasn’t stated anything either, but considering Nexstar’s approach, a lot of writing was on the wall about it. It should be noted that these projects aren’t exactly dead, just reverted to the studios to further develop and shop the shows around, as current network president Brad Schwartz told. Status updates for the projects by the studios are in the midst of being obtained, still waiting to hear back.
Source: TVLine