Tagged: wonder woman

The worst new TV show won’t even get to air

I’m holding off on discussing most of the current network TV upfront frenzy — figuring that there is no point in talking about it until all the ducks are in a row and things are factual, not presumed — but some items warrant an individual note. David E. Kelley’s “Wonder Woman” pilot, which by all accounts was going to be astronomically terrible, won’t spawn a television series. NBC has passed on the show. This is a good news/bad news thing. The good news is that the world will be spared the show, which sounded really, really awful from every review of the pilot and the script. The bad news is that Adrianne Palicki, the show’s promising star, doesn’t get to headline her own TV series.

However, I prefer to see the glass as mostly full. Palicki got all of the benefits from “Wonder Woman” and none of the negatives: She became slightly more well-known without having to actually go on national television, spouting David E. Kelley’s dialogue while dressed as Wonder Woman. She doesn’t have the burden of people watching the show’s premiere, nor of the show’s cancellation a month later. Silver lining!

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Dreading “Wonder Woman”

It is with a pervasive sense of dread that I remain aware of “Wonder Woman,” a TV series that might air on NBC this fall. On the one hand, the show’s costume looks comical and it comes from David E. Kelley. On the other hand, Adrianne Palicki. So I just don’t know! Anyway, with that in mind, here are some photos of Palicki wearing a slightly revamped costume while shooting on Hollywood Boulevard. For reasons I cannot imagine, photos of an attractive woman running around in a revealing outfit are burning up the Internet.

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Warner Bros. is eyeballing a “Batman” reboot and a “Justice League” movie

Ben Fritz profiled Jeff Robinov in today’s L.A. Times. Robinov is about to succeed Alan Horn as the top film exec at Warner Bros., and is one of the main candidates to replace studio chairman Barry Meyer after his contract is up in 2013. So it’s worth taking a look at the man who would run Warner Bros., the studio that finished among the top two studios in market share seven times between 2001 and 2010. And he has some big plans for the company’s comic book properties.

“The Dark Knight Rises” and the new “Superman” are both due out next year. Looking beyond that, Robinov is talking up a “Justice League” film in 2013 as well as a rebooted “Batman” in the post-Nolan era. Yes, the new “Batman” hasn’t even started filming, and he’s already plotting for a reboot with Nolan and Emma Thomas producing. The “Batman” thing is unsurprising — at this point in time, the two biggest comic book movie properties are “Batman” and “Spider-Man” (no, “X-Men” and “Superman” don’t make the top two) — but the “Justice League” tidbit was unexpected. After all, a “Justice League” movie (directed by George Miller and starring Adam Brody and Armie Hammer, among others) was thisclose to production before the writer’s strike of 2007 and 2008.

Robinov is clearly watching Marvel (and their new parent company, Disney) rev up for “The Avengers,” and has decided to take the same road but in the opposite direction. Whereas Marvel is rolling out solo flicks for Captain America and Thor before they join Iron Man on-screen next year, Robinov wants to put everybody together in a “Justice League” movie and give The Flash and Wonder Woman solo adventures afterwards. (This doesn’t include “Green Lantern,” already heading for theaters this summer, but that film is mentioned as one of their big comic book properties.)

This guy has an intriguing history. He likes big-budget “tentpoles,” as you can tell from the comic book movie thing. He closed the specialty movie division in 2008 and infamously passed on “Slumdog Millionaire.” According to the story, people say “Robinov’s greatest strength is his willingness to take creative risks on ambitious movies — a rarity in a business that increasingly plays it safe.” This is defined as hiring Chrisopher Nolan, Guy Ritchie and Zack Snyder to direct major properties, and I guess those are creative risks. Nolan’s “Batman” movies were stripped-down, realistic affairs about vigilantism and terrorism; Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” devoted an entire film to the unconsummated love between Holmes and Watson.

He takes over movies during a crucial moment for Warner Bros. The “Harry Potter” gravy train ends this summer, and next year brings Nolan’s final “Batman” as well as the potential relaunching of “Superman.” Nolan’s film is a sure thing, but Snyder’s “Superman” has a lot of work to do to achieve the megahit status Warner Bros. wants. Meanwhile, Marvel properties should soak up lots of the attention next year, with “The Avengers” and “The Amazing Spider-Man” looking to be two of the biggest films on the schedule. It’s interesting to see how Robinov is choosing to bank on his company’s established, but often cinematically troubled, stable of characters. After all, if Marvel and its affiliated studios can make two “Hulk” movies, a “Daredevil” flick and two “Punisher” movies in a matter of years, why shouldn’t iconic characters like Wonder Woman and the Flash get their shot?

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Great Casting And (Presumably) Awful Shows: Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman

I am probably never, ever going to watch a full minute of NBC’s new “Wonder Woman,” but I can at least respect (a) great casting and (b) the terrific casting of someone who deserves to be much more famous.

Adrianne Palicki, perhaps best known as Tyra from “Friday Night Lights,” is ideal casting for the role of Wonder Woman. She’s tall (so, so tall), beautiful, has charisma and can actually act. She’s one of those actors where people who know about her wonder why she isn’t more famous. Like several of her “Friday Night Lights” contemporaries — most notably Taylor Kitsch — she started out as a one-note character and one-note actor when the series began, but quickly showed surprising depth and gravitas as the show progressed. There’s a reason Palicki’s Tyra was given such a major storyline late in the first season and through the second season. It’s not because it was a natural road for a football series to follow; it’s because she and Jesse Plemmons’s Landry were so unexpectedly good in their scenes together. Sure, the show briefly took a turn for the bizarre at that point, but that was because of the plotting, not anything they did.

Palicki went on to make some movies (“Legion” and the remake of “Red Dawn” that is supposedly coming out this year) and tried another TV series in Fox’s “Lone Star,” which famously flamed out quickly. So she was out there, waiting for someone to realize her star potential, and this is a damn big role (even if it is on NBC).

But, as Alan Sepinwall points out, the “Wonder Woman” series has a major problem: David E. Kelley. He seems as incapable of writing believable storylines as he is unable to write realistic women. (I’m not even talking about the “Ally McBeal Set Feminism Back By Three Decades” stuff. I’m talking about a basic inability to write for female characters as if they were human beings, rather than neuroses manufacturing plants. But at least he can write great courtroom scenes!) If almost anybody else was overseeing this show, I would actually be vaguely interested, if only to see how the character is updated and the series modernized. With David E. Kelley, does someone say “You go, girl!” on the show? Someone says “You go, girl!” on the show.

Anyway, at least a few more people will learn about Palicki, which is nice.

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