The Powerpuff Girls Movie is a 2002 American animated superhero comedy film co-written and directed by Craig McCracken. It serves as a prequel to McCracken's television series The Powerpuff Girls and stars the regular television cast of Cathy Cavadini, Tara Strong, E. G. Daily, Roger L. Jackson, Tom Kane, Tom Kenny, Jennifer Hale, and Jennifer Martin. The film depicts the origins of the Powerpuff Girls (Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup) and how they became Townsville's defenders. Series composer, James L. Venable wrote the film's music score.
Produced by Cartoon Network Studios as its first theatrical film, The Powerpuff Girls Movie was released in theaters on July 3, 2002, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, but was a box-office failure, earning $16 million on a budget of $11 million, which was partly blamed on a crowded marketplace.
In June 2026, a new Powerpuff Girls film was announced to be in development at Warner Bros. Pictures Animation.
Plot In the crime- and injustice-riddled city of Townsville, Professor Utonium mixes sugar, spice and everything nice, hoping to produce the "perfect little girls" to improve Townsville. However, Jojo, the professor's pet chimpanzee and destructive laboratory assistant, breaks a flask of Chemical X, which spills onto the concoction. The experiment succeeds, producing three little girls whom the Professor names Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. He also discovers that the girls have gained superpowers from the added Chemical X. Despite the girls' recklessness with their powers, they all immediately grow to love each other as a family.
On their first day of school, the girls learn about the game of tag and begin to play it among themselves, which quickly grows destructive once they use their powers. The girls take their game downtown, where they cause extensive damage to the city until the Professor calms them down. That night, the Professor tells the girls to not use their powers in public anymore. The next day, the citizens of Townsville treat the girls as outcasts due to their destructive behavior. The Professor is arrested and jailed as responsible for the incident, which forces the girls to try to make their way home from school on foot. After a while, they become lost in an alleyway, where the Gangreen Gang corners them. Suddenly, Jojo – now superintelligent after the Chemical X explosion mutated his brain – rescues the trio.
Seeking revenge at the Professor for favoring the girls instead of him, Jojo gains their sympathy by convincing them that he is also hated for his powers and tricks them into helping him build a laboratory and a machine powered by Chemical X, which he claims will "improve the city". Afterward, Jojo rewards them with a trip to the local zoo, where he secretly implants small transportation devices on all the primates there. That night, Jojo teleports the primates to his lab and uses his new machine to inject them with Chemical X, which turns them into evil mutants like himself. The next morning, after the Professor is released from prison, the girls show him all the "good" they have done, only to discover that the primates are attacking the city. Jojo, renaming himself as Mojo Jojo, publicly announces the girls assisted him, which damages their reputation further and makes the Professor completely heartbroken beyond his criminal conviction. Dejected, the girls exile themselves on an asteroid in outer space.
Mojo announces his intention to rule the planet but becomes angry when his minions disobey him and concoct their own plans to terrorize Townsville. Meanwhile, on the asteroid, the banished girls hear Mojo trying to strangle the Professor and return to Earth, where they start rescuing the citizens. After Buttercup uses her powers to defeat a giant ape, Blossom convinces the former and Bubbles that they can use their powers to fight back. After his army is defeated, Mojo gives himself an overdose of Chemical X and grows into a giant monster, easily subduing the girls. Rejecting Mojo's offer of an alliance to take over the world, the girls push him off a decrepit skyscraper just as the Professor arrives with an antidote for Chemical X. Mojo lands on the Antidote X, which shrinks him down to his original size and allows the police to arrest him.
The girls consider using the Antidote X to remove their powers, thinking they would be accepted as normal girls, but the people of Townsville protest against this, apologize for misjudging them, and praise them instead for their heroism. The Mayor of Townsville requests that the girls use their powers to fight crime in the city and, with permission from the Professor, they become the city's most beloved crime-fighting superhero team, "The Powerpuff Girls".
Voice cast
Cathy Cavadini as Blossom Tara Strong as Bubbles E. G. Daily as Buttercup Roger L. Jackson as Mojo Jojo Tom Kane as Professor Utonium and Talking Dog Tom Kenny as the Mayor of Townsville, Narrator, Mitch Mitchelson, Snake, and Lil' Arturo Jennifer Hale as Ms. Keane Jennifer Martin as Ms. Sarah Bellum Jeff Bennett as Ace, Big Billy, Grubber, Baboon Kaboom, The Go-Go Patrol, Hacha Chacha, and the Anchorman Grey DeLisle and Phil LaMarr as additional character voices Frank Welker as various evil primates Kevin Michael Richardson as Rocko Socko and Ojo Tango Rob Paulsen as Hotta Watta, Killa Drilla, Blah-Blah Blah-Blah, and The Doot Da Doot Da Doo Doos
Production During the film's production, series creator and director Craig McCracken did not want it to appeal exclusively to girls, as the series' merchandise made it out to be, choosing to make an action-adventure film that felt closer to his conception of the Powerpuff Girls. When deciding what the final plot would be, the crew had "one that was purely an action show, and then one that was more of a subtle character piece". Cartoon Network liked both of them, so the result is a hybrid. McCracken said that there was no real difference when directing the film in comparison to a standard TV episode:
The Powerpuff Girls was known for its audience being highly composed by "underground" adults, and the film was intended in part to appeal to that demographic. According to Cartoon Network executives, it was also meant to "spark sales of DVDs and home videos, pack in crowds overseas and set kids scrambling to buy cartoon-themed merchandise". Jim Samples, executive vice president and general manager of the network, saw the year 2002 as a good opportunity to bring the show to the big screen, given the success of family features such as Disney's Lilo & Stitch and the live-action adaptation of Scooby-Doo. During production, McCracken was encouraged by Cartoon Network to make an edgier film; he recalled via Tumblr:
Like the series, the film's animation was provided by Rough Draft Korea, with additional digital compositing and effects by Mercury Filmworks and additional animation by Savage Frog! and Virtual Magic Animation. All work done overseas was then shipped to Los Angeles, where the main crew put every single shot together digitally at the recently opened Cartoon Network Studios. The film keeps the staple look of the television series with minimal changes, with characters such as the Girls and the Professor having a mostly geometric look. The backgrounds are hand-drawn with some computer-generated enhancements. The movie also went on to have some minor edits in pacing for the final cut, but "nothing so disastrous that it affected the final film", according to McCracken. Critics observed that the film's promotional campaign was notably muted, receiving significantly less marketing support than other animated features from the same year, such as Hey Arnold!: The Movie. However, McCracken said that Warner Bros. was putting $20 million into promoting the film. Some of the production process was also documented for the film's subsequent home video releases. According to McCracken, 49 half-hour episodes of the TV series had been made up to that point, but production on the show went on hiatus to focus on the making of the movie.
Music The crew was against including pop songs or any musical numbers that would interfere "in the body of the story", in order to respect audience expectations. However, the end credits are accompanied by a punk rock version of the series' ending theme written and performed by Bis, as well as "Pray for the Girls" by Frank Black and "That's What Girls Do" by No Secrets. James L. Venable, who composed the music for the television series, also composed the film's score, blending traditional orchestration with electronica. He had listened to "old monster movie scores" and acts such as The Chemical Brothers and Propellerheads for inspiration in developing the series' musical style, which was then poured into the movie. McCracken thought the band Gorillaz would be fitting to perform the film's ending credits song, considering that the plot is about "evil monkeys attacking Townsville" and that the band members are animated. Gorillaz creators Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn showed interest in composing the song, but their schedule made it impossible to accomplish.
Promotion By February 2002, the film was already being promoted on Cartoon Network's official website, where details about the "Be an Artist" contest were available, prompting fans in the United States under the age of 18 to send their drawings in the hopes of having it appear in a scene from the movie. The main winner was Laura Kramer, a 13-year-old girl from Ligonier, Indiana, who was chosen by director Craig McCracken. In Latin America, kids could enter a contest in which the first-place winner earned three tickets for the movie and a video camera. One of Delta Express' Boeing 737-200 jet aircraft (registered N310DA) featured a special aircraft with Powerpuff Girls-themed livery, and customers were given promotional items regarding the movie, including activity sheets, temporary tattoos and buttons.
Kids' WB aired four episodes of the television show in a marathon to help promote the movie. Prior to the release of the film, Daisy Rock produced a heart-shaped, 3/4 scale, pink guitar featuring all three Powerpuff Girls, and another featuring Mojo Jojo in a "premium alder body" with a 24-3/4" scale. Both instruments had a limited release. Out of the one hundred, some were given to cable viewers during the Cartoon Cartoon Fridays primetime block on May 31, 2002. A few others were available on Cartoon Network's online store for a short period. Artists who participated in the first two Powerpuff Girls soundtracks also got their own copy. From July of that year, Jack in the Box restaurants offered six toys based on the movie as part of their kid's meal menu: Punching Buttercup, Kung-Fu Bubbles, Karate Kick Blossom, Mojo Jojo's Volcano Viewer, Bulging Brains Mojo Jojo, and Skyscraper Mo Mojo Jojo. In July 17, DC published the film's official comic adaptation, written by Amy Rogers and illustrated by Phil Moy, Christopher Cook and Mike DeCarlo. Keebler, Dreyer's, Mervyn's, Toys "R" Us, Walmart, and the Got Milk? campaign were also commercial allies of the movie.
In August 2002, the MTR Corporation, which had previously used Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup as ambassadors in a campaign for subway safety in Hong Kong, promoted the film's debut in the Chinese market by selling a set of commemorative Powerpuff Girls-themed tickets at their stations, which also came with a sticker, a movie ticket coupon and a rag doll keychain of one of the three girls.
Release