WONDER WOMAN TV Pitch Fails To Sell, Shelved

WONDER WOMAN TV Pitch Fails To Sell, Shelved

0 Posted on Jan 7, 2011 in articles by Conor Kilpatrick | ShareThis

Back in October we told you that legendary television producer David E. Kelly was developing a live action television revival of Wonder Woman with Warner Bros. Television and DC Entertainment.

This past Wednesday, as comic fans were making their way through their stacks of new books, the show made the rounds at the networks. Deadline has the whole story but it breaks down like this:

FOX passed but that was expected. Next, Wonder Woman was pitched to The CW, the sister netweork of Warner Bros. Television. They were interested but passed due to budgetary concerns. Uh oh. So then Kelly went to ABC, which was considered a good fit for the show. But ABC passed. Why? Disney owns ABC and they now own Marvel and they are in the midst of developing several TV shows based on Marvel properties. One show in particular -- the one that would star Jessica Jones -- was considered too similar to Wonder Woman. That left CBS and NBC. According to Deadline, the CBS development execs were split over Wonder Woman and ended up passing, and NBC's current executive regime change made pitching the show impossible.

So where did Wonder Woman end up? Back on the shelf, where so many great scripts reside. I spent a little bit of time in television development about ten years ago -- that shelf is big.

Deadline notes that it's possible that Kelly will make the rounds with his Wonder Woman show again sometime in the future but I'm not holding my breath.

The biggest thing that I take from this story is that now that Marvel is owned by a company that also owns a major American television network (The CW is, unfortunately, not a major network), the options that DC Entertainment has to sell TV shows are much more limited. And you can bet that DC Entertainment wants to start selling a lot more TV shows.

via ifanboy.com