Amazon: How Wonder Woman Almost Beat The Flash to The CW | CBR - CBR - Comic Book Resources

Before Gal Gadot suited up as Diana of Themyscira for the first time in Batman v Superman, there were two failed attempts to make a live-action Wonder Woman TV show in the 2010s. The first one, titled Wonder Woman, starred Adrianne Palicki and was produced for NBC in 2011, but never made it past a poorly-received pilot. The second one, titled Amazon, nearly brought Diana to The CW before The Flash premiered in 2014.

Announced in September 2012, Amazon was reportedly set in the present-day and would've explored Diana's superhero origin story. However, unlike NBC's Wonder Woman pilot, Amazon wasn't designed to be a dramatic reinvention of the Wonder Woman mythology. In fact, leaked audition scenes for the show indicated it would've hewn closer to the plot of director Lauren Montgomery's 2009 Wonder Woman animated feature, which begins with modern Air Force pilot Steve Trevor crash-landing on Themyscira and inadvertently helping Ares to escape his prison on the island.

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While the original Amazon pilot script was written by Young Avengers comic book co-creator Allan Heinberg, it was later redeveloped by Ultimate X-Men writer Aron Eli Coleite in May 2013. A few months after that, The CW revealed it was also moving forward with a live-action series about The Flash, which would take place in the same continuity as Arrow. Of course, in the end, only The Flash made it to the small screen.

The CW president Mark Pedowitz confirmed Amazon was no longer happening in January 2014. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, he explained the network's reasoning, saying "These [DC superheroes] are iconic characters, so we're going to be very careful with Wonder Woman. You only get one shot before you get bit." By that point, Grant Gustin was fresh off his well-received debut as Barry Allen on Arrow, so it's no surprise The CW decided to focus on getting The Flash series up and going rather than spending more time and effort on Wonder Woman, which was struggling to come together.

It's also possible Amazon was affected by Gal Gadot's casting as Wonder Woman for the DCEU, which was announced a month before the show was formally abandoned. At the time, Warner Bros. and DC were wary of having different live-action versions of the same characters appear simultaneously on TV and in the DCEU, lest it confuse more casual audiences. This infamously led to Arrow's producers killing off the show's Suicide Squad after David Ayer began moving forward with his Suicide Squad movie.

Still, at the end of the day, everything more or less worked out for all concerned parties. Heinberg would go on to write the DCEU's Wonder Woman movie, which was a massive hit and transformed Gadot into a proper A-lister. Meanwhile, The Flash continues to be one of the Arrowverse's most popular series and will premiere its seventh season near the beginning of 2021. As for Gadot, she will return to the big screen in the upcoming sequel, Wonder Woman 1984, whenever WB decides it's safe to finally release the film in theaters.

Airing Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW, The Flash stars Grant Gustin, Candice Patton, Carlos Valdes, Danielle Panabaker, Tom Cavanagh, Jesse L. Martin and Danielle Nicolet. The series returns Tuesday, February 23.

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Sandy Schaefer (9 Articles Published)

Sandy Schaefer is a Movie and TV Features Writer at CBR. He has previously written for sites like Screen Rant, Examiner, and Clearlink, and holds degrees in Anthropology and Mathematics. You can follow him on Twitter @feynmanguy. Or don't, he's not the boss of you.