The CW Is Developing A New Wonder Woman TV Show OR Let’s Stay Cool, Gang

Vulture is reporting that the CW has commissioned a pilot script for a new Wonder Woman show from former Wonder Woman writer Allan Heinberg.  Tentatively titled Amazon, the show would focus on the early years of Wonder Woman’s superhero career (because the CW doesn’t make shows about grown ups).  It’s like a Smallville for Wonder Woman, basically.

So first off, the good things.  Wonder Woman might be on a screen of some sort!!  That’s exciting, and Allan Heinberg is a good choice to do it.  His run on Young Avengers is a modern classic, really, and while his time on Wonder Woman was brief, I dug it.  He’s a guy with a solid comics background, and is a WAY better choice than David E. Kelley was.  Plus, hopefully they’re smart enough to learn from the MANY mistakes of the last failed Wonder Woman pilot.

However, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here.  This is just a script.  There’s no greenlight or pilot guarantee or anything like that.  This is a rumour that the CW is, at best, looking into doing a Wonder Woman TV show.  That’s all we’ve got so far.

Also, we all know the history of bringing Wonder Woman to the screen… it just doesn’t work out well.  No one wanted to touch the David E. Kelley pilot, and with good reason, while for some reason Warner Bros. couldn’t get on the same page as Joss Whedon so he just went and made The Avengers instead.  Wonder Woman’s lived in development hell for ages, so we shouldn’t get too excited yet.

We should also remember that the CW already has a new superhero show scheduled for this fall in Arrow.  Smallville was solid for them, but you’ve got to think that the likelihood of Amazon getting made is going to depend on how well Arrow goes over.  If it bombs, the whole thing might get shelved.  And that’s a show that STARS Green Arrow, so it’s sort of a possibility.

Plus, it’s the CW.  That means a potentially low budget, melodramatic, terrible show.  No one wants to see One Tree Hill with Amazons.  Batman and Superman are getting $250 million movies, and I think Wonder Woman deserves to be in the same ballpark, not following America’s Next Top Model on a network not many people watch.  Though synergywise, Amazons are tall gals… you could do some cross-promotion with a guest spot prize for the model who takes the fiercest picture some week.

So yes, this is potentially exciting.  It could be cool.  Hell, it could be fantastic.  But it could also not happen OR we could get a show with Chad Michael Murray as Steve Trevor and last cycle’s Top Model runner-up as Wonder Woman.  A show on the CW might not be a great sign that Warner Bros. has faith in Wonder Woman as a potential franchise.

Let me leave you with some good news though.  In the 1960s, they tried to make a Wonder Woman pilot that turned out so awful they didn’t even bother to finish shooting it.  They tried again in the early 1970s with a TV movie that bombed.  Then, on the third try, we got Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman and a show that ran for three years.  Maybe the third time will be the charm again for Wonder Woman, and this show will take off after the Whedon and Kelley debacles.  But again, it’s the earliest of early days.  Let’s not get our hopes too high yet.