Wonder Woman(NBC) *Spoilers!*

[Christopher]

I'd say wait until the end of next week to close it. Given the WW pilot was made by Warner Brothers, there might be a infantesimal chance The CW could pick it up.

Didn't they already pass on it, though? As I recall, every network rejected the idea before NBC had second thoughts and picked it up after all.

Besides, I really doubt The CW could muster the budget a show like this would need to be done effectively.

Its simple: men like comic book heroes that are men[.b] being depicted in the live medium, and women could care less about comic books. So it didn't get picked up. Simple.

Speak for yourself. I'm a man, and I'd rather watch female protagonists any day of the week.

Besides, surely the success of Buffy and Xena, and the success of Summer Glau as a genre icon well beyond the success of the shows she's been in, should've long since killed the idea that female action heroes can't succeed.

The actual simple explanation is that the failure of this pilot means that this pilot failed, not that everything in its entire category is doomed to failure. It's hardly "simple" to take a single isolated example and make a blanket generalization from it. One data point cannot prove a pattern. The simple interpretation is to let it mean what it means and not try to generalize beyond it.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Yes every network passed on the original draft of the pilot script that Kelly did. The chances of this being picked up by any other network are extremely slim.

 

[coolghoul]

[snip...] All it takes is for a bunch of women in a focus group to snort at this so-called women's lib figure, jiggling out of her bodice, and that's the end of that.

Playboy and Pan Am both pass muster because they are classy workplace dramas focusing on the realistic-ish problems that women of that era faced, like Mad Men does. But it's impossible for women to relate to some bizarre person from some kind of ancient island who looks like a supermodel and dresses like a hooker yet allegedly runs a corporate empire.

Man - Reality sucks! I like the fantasy world!

I think I'll stay in the basement for a few more years before peeking out.

On a more serious note (tho' not any less true)- all TV Pilots should be written with an option of adding another 45 mins or hour to make it into a TV movie. This way when the network passes on the series option, at least the network can recover costs by doing it as a mini instead of a series. And it may resurrect a TV series, in case the mini is hugely popular - after all since a lot of TV series that actually pass end up getting cancelled within the first season or so, their decision to approve is not infallible. It follows that the decisions to not approve a TV series might also be wrong in a few cases.

 

[Gaith]

Long winded analysis of what went wrong.

From that article:

It had a great, promotable brand, top female superhero, Wonder Woman, experienced TV creator behind it, David E. Kelley, and an appealing star, Adrianne Palicki. So why didn't the Wonder Woman pilot go to series?

All together now, one last time,

Where have all the Wonder Womans gone?

Canned and canceled, every one.

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever.... know?


​

 

[Thestral]

My biggest disappointment in this not getting picked up is I was really looking forward to Adrienne Palecki as a lead.

 

[Jetfire]

​

Wonder Woman an XXX Parody!

Really? ​

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Here's an article that puts it all in context. NBC's pickups and rejects are part of a larger, long-term re-branding strategy to try to re-capture the young, upscale audience they used to have, but have largely migrated to cable, by giving them the same general sorts of shows they might find on the classier cable stations.

And that's what killed Wonder Woman. It wasn't the costume, not directly anyway. She just didn't fit the up-market profile as well as other pilots did. NBC is trotting out a lot of classy broads on Monday for advertisers to take a look at, and the girl dressed like a Hollywood hooker falling out of her garish brassiere would be an embarrassment.

LA Times article on NBC.

The brand that dominated TV for 20 years starting in the mid-1980s with smash hits such as "The Cosby Show," then "Friends" and "Seinfeld" has spent the last six years stuck in last place as its managers pursued what they believed was a forward-looking strategy aimed at cutting costs. Now the network has a new owner — cable giant Comcast — and a much-admired new programmer — Bob Greenblatt, formerly of Showtime — who are bent on restoring the luster of a network that once set standards for both quality and ratings in prime time.

...

With Greenblatt at the helm, the network is trying to lure the same upscale, educated young audience it once had a lock on.

...

Now analysts and talent representatives are hailing NBC — which will be the first network to greet advertisers Monday morning — for a return to form.

...

NBC has not delivered a flat-out hit in scripted programming in years, probably since the first season of "Heroes" nearly five years ago — an eternity by prime-time standards.

To correct that will take patience and many more at-bats. The numbers tell the story: NBC ordered 22 scripted pilots this year, compared with 20 last year and just 12 in 2009, when it embarked on an ill-fated experiment to bring Jay Leno to prime time. One talent representative who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing relationships with network executives said it could take NBC three to five years to become competitive again.

Here's my favorite part of the story:

Like many creative people in Hollywood, Brill was especially dismissive of the strategy under previous NBC boss Jeff Zucker of "managing for margins, not ratings" — that is, making programming decisions based on profitability, with little regard for a show's popularity. "That's not how you run a network," Brill said. "You might want to do that when you're ordering office supplies."

YOUCH!

On a more serious note (tho' not any less true)- all TV Pilots should be written with an option of adding another 45 mins or hour to make it into a TV movie. This way when the network passes on the series option, at least the network can recover costs by doing it as a mini instead of a series. And it may resurrect a TV series, in case the mini is hugely popular - after all since a lot of TV series that actually pass end up getting cancelled within the first season or so, their decision to approve is not infallible. It follows that the decisions to not approve a TV series might also be wrong in a few cases.

By the time they find out that the pilot was popular in the fall, the cast and producers will have gone onto other things and it's too late to develop the show into anything.

Here's what I think they should do: assemble internet focus groups of a few dozen or hundred people each and show the pilots to them. The first year, don't factor in the groups' opinions into show decisions; just take note of which group said what. Then when the shows air, note which groups correctly predicted successes and failures.

The next year, go back to only those groups and ask for their opinions on shows. Maybe don't even factor in their opinions that year either but check them again to make sure the first year wasn't a fluke. The third year, you can start trusting the opinions of whatever group got things right two times in a row.

That eliminates the problem of listening to anyone on the internet: that they are not representative of anything but themselves. Make them prove that they actually can predict success.

 

[Gaith]

Wonder Woman an XXX Parody!

Really?

Your implication that lesbians don't exist outside of pornography is reprehensible.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Wonder Woman an XXX Parody!

Really?

Your implication that lesbians don't exist outside of pornography is reprehensible.

You should seriously pitch your brilliant idea to Netflix! I'm sure they can't afford the actual WW license, but they could do a sleazy WW knockoff with strong lesbian undertones or overtones for that matter. FCC? Pfft!

NBC's strategy doesn't involve catering to the fanboys, but I think that's a great strategy for Netflix - basically, deliver Sat night SyFy monster movies, maybe a couple notches better, catering to tastes that are too small and embarrassing for a network to consider.

 

[Lt. Trull]

No wonder woman.... studio has shelved the idea....

http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/nbc-passes-on-wonder-woman-pilot--2972

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Yeah yeah yeah we heard yesterday. We're working on the petition campaign now.

 

[Gaith]

Wonder Woman an XXX Parody!

Really?

Your implication that lesbians don't exist outside of pornography is reprehensible.

You should seriously pitch your brilliant idea to Netflix! I'm sure they can't afford the actual WW license, but they could do a sleazy WW knockoff with strong lesbian undertones or overtones for that matter. FCC? Pfft!

I'm not interested in sleazy pulp lesbian adventure-fiction; I'm interested in wholesome, well-crafted and artfully erotic pulp lesbian adventure-fiction.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Kathy Bates won the Battle of the David E. Kelley Girls...I owe a co-worker a dollar.

 

[Aragorn]

It's too bad this wasn't a two-hour TV movie with backdoor pilot option, then it'd see the light of day at the very least.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Wow, I hadn't been in this thread because I've been avoiding spoilers for most shows lately. I decide to see what's up today and find it's cancelled! Really, I'm pretty surprised by this.

Should be interesting to see the pilot because you know it's going to come out at some point.

 

[the G-man]

I'm not interested in sleazy pulp lesbian adventure-fiction; I'm interested in wholesome, well-crafted and artfully erotic pulp lesbian adventure-fiction.

Actually, kinda, yes. You want to make a WW show/movie that works? You combine equal parts Xena and Thor, embrace some of the cheesier stuff with a knowing wink, hint at the whole "Amazons are lesbians" thing without alienating sponsors/parents (the way that Xena did with Gabrielle) and give it a decent budget for Olympus, etc.

 

[Gaith]

"Homosexuality is a form of love, and as such, it deserves our respect."

- Christopher Hitchens



Any parent uneasy with their child watching a show that depicted same-sex relations in a positive light is unworthy of the screen it'd be displayed on.


Other than that, glad you agree.

 

[Captaindemotion]

It's too bad this wasn't a two-hour TV movie with backdoor pilot option, then it'd see the light of day at the very least.

Agreed. I may not have stuck with the whole series, but I'd definitely have watched the pilot/movie/origin story.

 

[bigdaddy]

I really wish NBC would have tried something different (because they have nothing to lose) and show their pilots in March or April and see what the buzz is about them and then pick up what was positive, negative and then what the network people just liked.

 

[StarTrek1701]

@StarTrek1701 that line of logic is extremely bizzare. I'm a man and I enjoy female superherorines, and Wonder Woman is one of my favorite characters.

I enjoy female superheroines too and WW is also a great character when done right. But you and I are not the bigger sample market. We are niche, very rare.

As for women not caring about comic books...sigh...that's gotta be some kind of sterotypical comment.

Does everything have to be labelled a stereotype and whatnot these days? What next? Saying its stereotypical that men like porn more than women?

Every time I go into my comic shop it's crawling with women.

And every time I go to one, not a single female is found.