Specialty Box Office: ‘Frances Ha’ Triumphs As … 
‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ $164.5M Global: Lower … 
Cannes: Backup Media, Memento Bring Heat To Fest Helmer Jim … 
Cannes: Sundance Selects Acquires Dardenne Brothers’ … 
Cannes: Wrekin Hill Acquires U.S. On Gabriele … 
Bill Hader’s ‘SNL’ Stefon Farewell: Video 
Cannes: The Weinstein Co. Books ‘Suite … 
BBC Confirms ‘Doctor Who’ Season 8 
Finally, Cannes Dealing! Radius-TWC Nabs Director’s … 
Hammond On Cannes: Wet Fest’s Official Competition … 
‘Vampire Academy’ Adds ‘Modern … 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘Shark Tank’ Finale Up, … 
Cannes: Worldview Options Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn … 
UPFRONTS 2013: The Overachievers 
‘Mike & Molly’ Creator Mark Roberts To … 
Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts Set For … 
Hammond On Cannes: Weinstein Brings Out Stars For 2013 … 
Cannes: Fake Gunshots Interrupt Canal Plus Live Broadcast … 
‘The Great Gatsby’ Starts With $5.4M … 
Cannes: Music Box Snags Competition’s ‘Michael … 
UPDATE: Amazon Studios Begins Pilot Pickups; … 
Warner Bros. TV is taking another stab at a live-action series based on the DC character of Wonder Woman. This time, it is via the most popular approach for rebooting (comic) book franchises at the moment: going back to an origins story. The CW has given a script commitment to a drama, tentatively titled Amazon, which will chronicle Diana as a young Amazonian, before she becomes a warrior princess with super powers. The project, first reported by Vulture, will be written by Allan Heinberg (Grey’s Anatomy, The O.C.). It is unclear what origins for the character the TV project will chose — the comics’ stories have varied from Diana being a clay figure brought to life by the magic of the gods to her being a demigoddess, the natural-born daughter of Hippolyta and Zeus.
Related: ANALYSIS: Why ‘Wonder Woman’ Didn’t Go And What That Means For ABC’s ‘Hulk’
The approach is similar to WBTV’s take on Superman, which resulted in the long-running Smallville. It was also applied to Sex And The City with the upcoming CW/WBTV series Carrie’s Diaries. In features, there has been a string of origins editions of tentpole comic book franchise lately, including X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class and the latest Spider-Man movie. WBTV previously tried a live-action Woder Woman series two seasons ago, when David E. Kelley’s got a pilot order but did not go to series.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
Loading ...
So first there was the Superman show without Superman.
Now we’re getting a Green Arrow show without Green Arrow.
Next up, a Wonder Woman show without Wonder Woman?
You’re forgetting that after the launch of Smallville (aka Superman show with no Superman), the CW aired one season of Birds of Prey (aka the Batman show with no Batman).
Sounds ok and would fit well behind Arrow if it gets another seasoj
This sounds perfect for NBC.
Xena was very popular and Wonder Woman is the cooler version with more awesome abilities.
Simple COMMON SENSE RULES TO FOLLOW:
1. It has to be big in scale. Xena had the benefit of New Zealand that lowered the production costs or have producers that are as clever as the one’s who produced Buffy and brought in movie quality action scenes.
2. It cannot have comical elements at least until the second season. It has to have a very serious attitude and please don’t have her hook up with a cheesy dumb guy. The Super-Girl movie made me want to vomit.
3. Wonder Woman has to have a very hot costume and a very hot actress has to be in it. If Wonder Woman is more covered up then Linda Carter was several decades ago then it will be an instant fail.
Like I said, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Xena Warrior Princess proved that you can get high ratings on the genre of a female super-hero. It just has to be executed right.
Pay attention, CW! These are all excellent notes. I had already thunk of many of them myself, but it’s good to see others on the same wavelength.
Cmon, its the CW! This isnt going to be made for comics fanboys or for boys at all. Remember the CW key demo. It will need a 25 year old actress playing a 15 year old, and in a love triangle with two hunky angsty boys, who ideally are brothers. Has Wonder Woman ever fought vampires?
Smallville had its moments, but they waited way too long to put him in the Superman suit and then only did it briefly in the last episode. The whole last season should have had him as Superman. Do we really need a Wonder Woman show where she isn’t in costume, doesn’t have her lasso, and where we have to wait years to see her become Wonder Woman? At with Smallville there was a history of Superboy adventures in comics of a young Clark Kent to pull from. But Wonder Woman has rarely been portrayed as a teenager in the comics and doesn’t come to America until she’s an adult. Just do a Wonder Woman movie already instead. David E. Kelley couldn’t do Wonder Woman on a TV budget and a Wonder Woman origins show seems like it’ll barely be a Wonder Woman show, without the costume and all the things that make her Wonder Woman.
You lost me at Grey’s Anatomy and The OC
Just don’t change her. We don’t need the awful modern version of her costume like the movie was going to use. and she doesn’t need to be 20 – its is Wonder Woman .And she doesn’t need to be anorexic
Wonder WOMAN written by a MAN. Are there no female writers, WB?! WONDER WOMAN was screwed up before cuz it was written by a tired, lazy white man. WONDER WOMEN is a minority and a woman. DID YOU NOT LOOK FOR EITHER TO REBOOT THE PREVIOUS FAILURE?!?!
You do realize that Wonder Woman was created by a man, right?
…And explain to me how Wonder Woman is a minority? Are super-powered Amazons suddenly a minority or something?
Just as an FYI, Wonder Woman is an Amazon, not an Amazonian. She’s not from the region around the famous river or rainforest, but from Themyscira (aka Paradise Island). Hope this goes forward, Heinberg is a great choice – you didn’t note, but he also happened to write an arc on the Wonder Woman comic, so he knows and loves the character well!
This is all the kind of stuff that the CW audience doesn’t know about and wouldn’t care if they did.
This isn’t going to be made for the comic biok fans. It will be made for CW viewers: girls who like shows about angst ridden teen vampires. So this will be an angst ridden teen superheroine.
Well let’s be honest, Kelly’s Wonder Woman failed not because of budget but because of his writing. He tried to make her this mopey Iron man vigilante. The budget wasn’t the problem, he just can’t write for that genre.
This ‘Amazon’ concept sounds okay but the draw of ‘Smallville’ was the Buffy format it copied. The producers made him Superman when they brought in Lois.
I hope this ‘Amazon’ gets off the island but they focus more on Diana becoming acclimated in mans world and spreading her message if peace, equality, etc.
How can one get on this gravy train?
Cinemax!!!
This just sounds like WB going through their “library” to see what they can mine. (They own DC comics.) But it also sounds like they are wanting a low-budget approach.
SMALLVILLE kept costs in check for most of its run, relying on some pretty basic (and sometimes cheesey) CGI. ARROW looks like a cheap version of Green Arrow, from the trailers they’ve shown so far. Even ABC’s LOIS & CLARK de-emphasized big-budget effects in favor of the “human” side.
Now we get WONDER WOMAN? The 1970′s version was definitely a cheese-fest, but at least they gave us the costumed character. A WW as a young girl speaks to a different audience than most comic book shows, so maybe WB ios trying to tap the tween market. Whichever way they go, you cna be sure they’ll do it as inexpensively as possible.
This will fail if it’s all set in the Amazon on the mythical Paradise Island then what’s the point? For one thing it’s an island of beautiful women but they never explain how they reproduce and only produce girls. This could be fascinating but it’s too risque for network TV.
Do they capture shipwrecked sailors and force them to perform stud work for their sperm? Do they have genetic technology to make sure only girls are conceived? Do they clone each other so they give birth to their own daughters without any sperm needed?
Wonder Woman only works if she’s in present day America in a big city with flashbacks to when she was a girl and a teenager in the Amazon. That’s what Kelly tried to do and nobody ever got to see his pilot.
Plenty of people saw that pilot and then immediately wished they hadn’t. It was horrendous on every level.
In the comics, the Amazons are immortal and a fixed population, so reproduction isn’t an issue. (if you’re immortal you don’t really have a bilogocal clock I guess plus the comics were for kids so no sexytalk) Diana was unique in that she was the only child born there in millennia.
I always thought the Smallville approach was good and could have worked for WW. No costumes, just the powers. A younger Diana. The real comic-book fans could recognize the characters and tropes, and the lack of a gaudy costume kept the characters grounded. It even worked storywise for the unaired Aquaman pilot (even though it didn’t get picked up). Don’t scoff, Smallville lasted for 10 years. Full broadcast years, too, not boutique cable seasons (8, 10, 13 eps)! What other current show had that kind of longevity?
That said, I think they keep short-changing the character by shoving her to TV at a time when the most obscure indie comics and 3rd-tier characters like Daredevil and 6th-tier characters like Jonah Hex get big-screen deals.
Sexism?
And Gina Carano as WW, I’d definitely pay $10 for that.
Heinberg barely finished his WW arc. The last issues were months late. Oh.. and it was terrible.
“The project, first reported by Vulture, will be written by Allan Heinberg (Grey’s Anatomy, The O.C.)”
Oh god. Don’t care.
Let me explain.
Allan Heinberg was brought in relaunch the original Wonder Woman comic in… 2006? Any ways, he took a year to write the dullest navel gaze this side of SpiderMan 3. It was only five issues long but felt like twelve.
And someone thinks he should write Wonder Woman… Again.
Congratulations to Allan! He has been working with this character for a long time and is a great choice for this.
Paul Dini and Alex Ross did a remarkable Wonder Woman story, where Diana was an embassador for the United Nations, preventing student massacres in China, disarming land mines and protecting women used as human shields in the Middle East. Grounded, realisitc, topical, lots of action – this is the kind of Wonder Woman that would make sense on present day television. I would look closely at that material if I were developing.
The smaller the outfit, the larger the audience.
Some people don’t learn from their failures.