'Powerpuff Girls' to Big Screen

By Stephen M. Silverman

09/07/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

Sugar and spice and everything nice go into "The Powerpuff Girls," the popular, Emmy-nominated series on the Cartoon Network. And now the crayon-carrying crimefighters, already supercharged with Chemical X, are about to get a healthy dose of celluloid. Warner Bros. Pictures and the Cartoon Network will produce an animated feature film based on the adventures of Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup, scheduled to open in the summer of 2002. (Warner Bros. and the Cartoon Network are both part of Time Warner, which also owns PEOPLE.) "The combination of great animation, timely girl power and the show's nod to the hot design style of Japanese animation has enabled 'The Powerpuff Girls' to hit on all cylinders, from television to merchandising and now to movies," Cartoon Network president Betty Cohen said in a statement. The Girls' creator, Professor Utonium, couldn't be happier.