In the newest edition of “Almost History,” where we talk about unproduced shows and movies, I’ve obtained previously unrevealed details about The CW’s ‘Amazon’, a Wonder Woman prequel series akin to ‘Smallville’ and ‘Gotham’.
The first version of the pilot was written by Allan Heinberg, who went on to write the ‘Wonder Woman’ movie, in September 2012, but The CW passed on his version and tapped ‘Locke and Key’s Aron Eli Coleite to take another crack at it in the spring of 2013. This “Almost History” will focus on Coleite’s version.
It was described to me as a darker take on the Wonder Woman mythos with an ‘Alias’ vibe, about a young woman trying to save the world from an international conspiracy. A young Diana Prince would have been the lead character with Hippolyta and other Amazons featuring. Diana would have been curious about the world outside and yearned to the see it, which leads to her rebelling against her mother, ultimately being a major defining event for her character. The series would have also shown how brutal and stringent life on Themyscira could be.
The CW wasn’t a fan of this darker take, as they wanted something more in line with Ron Howard’s ‘Splash,’ about a young, naive girl who was just beginning to understand the world.
In the end, The CW didn’t end up making a Wonder Woman series at all, and a feature film starring Gal Gadot released in 2017, with a sequel dated for August of this year.