Entertainment Weekly is reporting that the Wonder Woman TV show is dead, and I think EVERY Wonder Woman fan in the universe saw this coming. We’re used to hearing about potential Wonder Woman projects that don’t come together, leaving us toyed with and annoyed. Though really, losing the David E. Kelley project is probably going to sting people a lot less than losing the Joss Whedon project. Plus, we’re sort of numb to the pain now.
So NBC said no, which is a bummer. For purely selfish reasons, I was jazzed to have a Wonder Woman TV show… that would be really handy for someone trying to shop a book about the character!! As a HUGE Wonder Woman fan, the show sounded like it had some big problems (too big, it would seem now), but I appreciated that Kelley and his team seemed to be tweaking a lot of things in response to fan reactions. They made the costume better, they had her kick more ass, and it just overall seemed like a show that was willing to evolve. I anticipated not liking the pilot and then enjoying the show better as they played with it over the course of the season. From what we originally heard of the pilot to what it became, it definitely sounded like it got better. Not good, necessarily, but better. It might have gone somewhere cool.
While I was never super enthused about the project (apart from the logo… I quite liked that), I was nonetheless looking forward to it. When damn near every superhero/comic property has a movie or TV show on the way, Wonder Woman deserves to be on a screen of some sort. She has SO much potential, and I think a decent Wonder Woman project could go over big. I mean, look at Thor… it opened awesomely last weekend, and Thor is basically a male Wonder Woman. Mythological background, cool powers, fish out of water… that’s Wonder Woman!! It’s sad that no one can get anything going with Wonder Woman.
Now, NBC’s passed on Wonder Woman before… not to get your hopes up or anything. They passed on the script before changing their mind, so maybe the same could happen here. I hope they at least show it at some point, since it’s already made… maybe as a TV movie or something. I’d even go for it leaking online. I just want to see what it would have been like.
NBC also passed on Ron Moore’s magic/cop show 17th Precinct, which is nuts… he made BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!! AND they passed on a Western set in Reconstruction-era America. I would have watched the hell out of that show!! It could be like Loveless on my TV (probably not… you’d need HBO for Loveless… I miss Loveless). But they also passed on Don Johnson’s new show, so they’ve got some sense at least. No one’s clamouring for a new Nash Bridges. But yeah, this is a downer. An expected downer, really, but a downer nonetheless.
TIM HANLEY 