Not a fan of Kathy Lee Crosby's Wonder Woman?
Wonder Woman headed to the small screen
- Thread starter JacksonArcher
- Start date
Definitely watch it but they must have;
1. One heck of a beautiful star to rival Lynda Carter in 1978
2. Lynda Carter should definitely be a recurring guest star. And Lyle Waggoner should be in there somewhere too.
Lynda Carter as Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons and Wonder Woman's mother.
There is no other choice for that role.
Just as long as Kelly remembers that he's supposed to be making a TV show about a sexy woman running around in tights saving the world. Lynda Carter was able to do it without looking silly, so I'm sure they'd be able to find someone who could pull it off.
Seriously, though, what killed Smallville for me is they futzed around for half a decade darn near before they realized they weren't making a variation of the old Roswell TV series, or 90210. And they really pulled away too far from the Superman canon. They've made up for it in a hit and miss way over the last few years, but the show really lost me that first year and I've never gone back.
I agree this is a good time for female heroes on TV. Fringe, Undercovers, Nikita, Grace Park on Hawaii 5-0. The good news about this being a Kelly production is it'll have a better than average chance of a) actually going to series and b) surviving for a bit.
Alex
Seriously, though, what killed Smallville for me is they futzed around for half a decade darn near before they realized they weren't making a variation of the old Roswell TV series, or 90210. And they really pulled away too far from the Superman canon. They've made up for it in a hit and miss way over the last few years, but the show really lost me that first year and I've never gone back.
I agree this is a good time for female heroes on TV. Fringe, Undercovers, Nikita, Grace Park on Hawaii 5-0. The good news about this being a Kelly production is it'll have a better than average chance of a) actually going to series and b) surviving for a bit.
Alex
Definitely watch it but they must have;
1. One heck of a beautiful star to rival Lynda Carter in 1978
2. Lynda Carter should definitely be a recurring guest star
Lynda Carter as Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons and Wonder Woman's mother.
There is no other choice for that role.
I dunno, Lucy Lawless would be a good fit for that role IMO.
Except that's basically what they were trying to do. The goal was to make a show that would appeal to the network's general audience, rather than specifically to the smaller, niche audience of comics fans. Avoiding the conventional approach to the mythos and reinventing it as a more domesticated teen drama was exactly the point of doing the show in the first place.
But now the new showrunners have a different philosophy -- perhaps because more of the show's audience consists of comics fans than they expected, or perhaps because recent superhero movies have been successful enough that it's now seen as profitable to embrace comics elements rather than avoiding them, or perhaps because the show ran so long that the original approach grew tired and stilted and the new showrunners decided it was time for a new approach, or perhaps because the show has such a loyal following by now that they'll stick with the show even as it embraces its comics heritage more fully, even if many of them would've been scared off by that in the early years.
I agree with the first three, but I don't know about that last example. Park's character is the least experienced member of the team, she's just one woman working under three men, and she was introduced in a bikini and in the second episode got stripped to her underwear by the bad guys. She doesn't really stand out as a strong female hero, except maybe by 1970s standards.
Too old, maybe as Wonder Woman's mother.
And, most importantly, it worked.
It may have turned off a few older comic book readers, but the show attracted tons of viewers (like my teenage niece) who had never read a comic book in their lives. And it lasted much longer than LOIS & CLARK, THE FLASH, and other, more traditional comic book shows.
WONDER WOMAN could do worse than copy SMALLVILLE's approach.
I really like some of Kelley's stuff (anything with Boston in the title, anyway) but he does seem an odd fit for this. I trust that he won't be making WW as silly and OTT as Ally McBeal (which was nearly unwatchable by the end); The Practice and Chicago Hope showed that he can do drama too, so I hope that those are the entries on his CV that got him the gig, rather than his more light-hearted stuff.
But if WW was to go back to tv, why didn't they just re-hire Joss Whedon?!
But if WW was to go back to tv, why didn't they just re-hire Joss Whedon?!
^Because Joss Whedon is busy making The Avengers and script-doctoring the movies leading up to it.
Still, I agree -- a Whedon Wonder Woman series would excite me far more than a David E. Kelley one.
Still, I agree -- a Whedon Wonder Woman series would excite me far more than a David E. Kelley one.
^ Yeah, I know he's doing the Avengers and it's really just wishful thinking on my part that either WB would ask him back or that he'd agree to do it. Still, you'd think he might have time to at least write a pilot ep & series bible and then have others do mosty of the heavy lifting for the actual series.
I mean, he was multi-tasking for much of Dollhouse, Angel and Firefly, which had - and benefitted from - a lot of other input from other writers.
I mean, he was multi-tasking for much of Dollhouse, Angel and Firefly, which had - and benefitted from - a lot of other input from other writers.
Not only that but Joss was never able to complete his script draft. I doubt Warner/DC Ent would consider rehiring him.
There's some interesting, or eccentric, if you prefer, thinking going on at WB in terms of who they hire to develop their comic book franchises.
You have Christopher Nolan, who's obviously proven very successful behind the Batman series. So they've asked him to recreate lightning twice by putting him in charge of Superman (albeit with a different director but re-teamed with his brother Jonathan, a collaborator with the Batman series). Of course, the hiring of Bryan Singer for Superman Returns showed that getting someone with a successful track record in comic adapatations will not necessarily result in a universally loved or successful movie.
Green Lantern has the capable but uninspired choice of Martin Campbell. Then for The Flash, you have Greg Berlanti (at one stage linked to a GL movie but rejected by WB for his inexperience). He's best known for tv shows live Everwood and Jack & Bobby and has a romcom coming out in the next few weeks. But supposedly his Flash script will be influenced by Se7en and Silence of the Lamsb. Um - what?
Then you've Kelley, best known for wacky lawyer adventures bringing back arguably the best known female superhero to the small screen. I know that WB say this doesn't rule out a big screen version (Superman Returned to the big screen while Smallville was airing) but it does seem to make it less likely.
All in all, kinduva lack of common purpose or tone, as far as I can see.
You have Christopher Nolan, who's obviously proven very successful behind the Batman series. So they've asked him to recreate lightning twice by putting him in charge of Superman (albeit with a different director but re-teamed with his brother Jonathan, a collaborator with the Batman series). Of course, the hiring of Bryan Singer for Superman Returns showed that getting someone with a successful track record in comic adapatations will not necessarily result in a universally loved or successful movie.
Green Lantern has the capable but uninspired choice of Martin Campbell. Then for The Flash, you have Greg Berlanti (at one stage linked to a GL movie but rejected by WB for his inexperience). He's best known for tv shows live Everwood and Jack & Bobby and has a romcom coming out in the next few weeks. But supposedly his Flash script will be influenced by Se7en and Silence of the Lamsb. Um - what?
Then you've Kelley, best known for wacky lawyer adventures bringing back arguably the best known female superhero to the small screen. I know that WB say this doesn't rule out a big screen version (Superman Returned to the big screen while Smallville was airing) but it does seem to make it less likely.
All in all, kinduva lack of common purpose or tone, as far as I can see.
I have no problem with Campbell as director for "Green Lantern". I forget now who else was in the running but he's made competent movies and "Casino Royale" is one of my favorite Bond films. I can't comment on Greg Berlanti. I don't think that DC ENT is going for any common purpose or tone in their films. They're not building a cohesive universe like Marvel Universe is...at least not right off the bat.
Well, that's not really fair. The reason he never got past the outline stage is because he and the WB executives couldn't come to terms on how to approach the film. He had to get their approval of the outline before he could proceed with the script, and they just never approved of any of his outlines. So it's not that he wasn't "able to complete" a script, it was that the executives never gave him the go-ahead to proceed to script phase, because he and they couldn't see eye-to-eye on how to approach the film. It was a clash of interpretations, not a failure of ability on Whedon's part.
But that was when Joel Silver was in charge of the project, which is no longer the case. And it was before the reorganization that created DC Entertainment and put Diane Nelson and Geoff Johns in overall charge of DC's film and TV projects. So with different people running the show now, Whedon's differences with Silver don't necessarily preclude him from working on new DC projects in the future.
Would they hire him though after working for a Marvel blockbuster? Especially if Marvel Studios locks him up for an "Avengers" trilogy? Probably not. I know the backstory behind Joss's falling out with Silver and Warner Bros or at least what he's revealed online. It's unfortunate. I was really looking forward to that film. I've read a couple of the specs that Warner Bros bought after wards and while entertaining they didn't really feel like a "Wonder Woman" movie. I would have been interested in seeing what a Joss Whedon "Wonder Woman" film would have turned out like along obviously whom he would cast. I think Nathan Fillion would have been a great Steve Trevor.
She is only 40, and she looks good.
I don't agree with the standard that every character (especially female) needs to be a late teen or twenty-something.
Although, I do recall earlier in this thread they wanted to go the Smallville route...
Bummer.
I vote for Olivia Munn.
Why not? They hired Bryan Singer away from the X-Men films. They cast the guy who played Deadpool as Hal Jordan. WB's Young Justice animated series snapped up Greg Weisman fresh from Marvel's Spectacular Spider-Man, and the DCAU shows' Stan Berkowitz was a veteran of the '90s FOX Spider-Man animated series. And the two comics companies have been sharing writers and artists for decades.
Well, of course, I acknowledged several posts ago that Whedon would be unavailable due to his Avengers commitments. Nobody is claiming for a minute that there's any chance Whedon could actually do a Wonder Woman series. I'm just saying that, if he theoretically were available, he wouldn't necessarily be ruled out for the other reasons you've suggested.
After all, Joel Silver wasn't able to find any other writer or director who could generate a WW story that satisfied him. So if anyone's responsible for the downfall of that project, I'd say Silver's the likely candidate. If nobody could satisfy his vision for the character, maybe it wasn't a feasible vision.
And he was, in the animated Wonder Woman movie.