By: Russ Burlingame on September 6, 2012
While a lawsuit is still ongoing over the way Warner Television and The CW Network developed Smallville, the long-running show about a pre-Superman Clark Kent, and their Green Arrow adaptation Arrow has yet to hit the airwaves, it appears as though they’re developing a Wonder Woman series as well.
According to Vulture, onetime Wonder Woman comic book writer Allan Heinberg is developing a show with the working title Amazon for the network, which would function very much like Smallville, looking into her early years as a fledgling heroes and deal with her origin on Themysciara.
It may be interesting to see how the series will develop, if it does, given the fact that the Greek mythology that provides Wonder Woman’s current origin story probably won’t translate well to the small screen.
Just a year ago, Ally McBeal showrunner David E. Kelley shot a pilot for a Wonder Woman series planned at NBC; the pilot was widely panned by the few who saw it, and never made it to air. It’s in that context that Vulture is covering Amazon:
It should be noted that CW is only developing a script at this point; no pilot production has been greenlit or even contractually guaranteed. (The network, along with WBTV and D.C., declined comment) But if a pilot is filmed, and a show gets ordered, it will be a major accomplishment for WBTV and D.C., since rebooting WW (outside of animation) has proven challenging in the three decades since the campy Wonder Woman TV series wrapped its three-year run on ABC and CBS in 1979. Most recently, there was the aforementioned Kelley take. It was pitched to various networks in the fall of 2010, apparently rejected by broadcasters, but then picked up by NBC in early 2011. After Kelley turned in his pilot, however, the Peacock made the decision to not move forward with a series. Likewise, Joss Whedon had long been attached to a film take on Wonder Woman. That never came to fruition, either, and Whedon is now busy with another comic franchise these days.
What, if anything, this might mean for the feature film version of Wonder Woman that’s reportedly in the works at Warner Brothers remains to be seen. It’s unlikely that the one would have much of an impact on the other, given that Superman Returns fell right in the middle of the Smallville run and the two had no connection to one another.
Given that Superman and Wonder Woman are currently both de-aged and dating in the New 52 DC Universe, one wonders whether we might see a cameo by a hunky Tom Welling at some point in the pilot if it gets greenlit.
