8 Superhero TV Shows That Never Materialized

With so many superhero TV shows on at the moment, it's getting incredibly difficult to find time to do other things - such as eat, sleep, troll and, you know, work. What's even scarier is that there's more to come. Soon, your viewing will only be comic book-related and nothing else will suffice. It's like the comicgeddon, but we love it! These types of shows aren't really anything new, though, and we've seen tons of them over the ages - from the likes of 1966's Batman to 2002's Birds of Prey. However, there have been quite a few over the years that were deep into the production phase but never quite made it out of the starting blocks. Some of them even had pilots ordered. So, we've hopped onto the Flash's cosmic treadmill and gone back in time to look at some of the big what ifs of the comic book TV world. A few of these seemed like pretty good ideas, while others were thankfully canned before they could poison our screens with their sheer mediocrity and insolence. Starting on the next page, you can check out the 8 superhero TV shows that never materialized. As always, if you have any of your own that we may have missed, be sure to share them in the comments section down below. Wonder Woman When you think of 2011's proposed Wonder Woman TV series, helmed by Ally McBeal's mastermind David E. Kelley and starring Adrianne Palicki, how bad could it really be? Well, worse than you could ever imagine. If you're one of the unfortunate people in the world who's seen the pilot of this catastrophic abortion, we genuinely feel sorry for you. This melodrama stank worse than a public toilet and attempted to stain the Amazon's legacy on the small screen with some awful writing and equally cheap tropes. Here's just one thing amongst many wrong with the show: in this adaptation, Diana is the CEO of Themyscira Industries, a company which is privately run to fight crime and market the image of Wonder Woman. Yes, because Diana sure needs those RTs and billboards to make sure that her superhero career has a positive brand reputation online… Thankfully, someone at NBC applied common sense and flushed this turd before it developed any further. Whoever that person is, we owe them a debt of gratitude for saving us from this disaster. X-Men: Pryde Of The X-Men Back in 1989, Marvel Productions decided to take a stab at an X-Men animated series titled X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men. While a pilot was produced and aired, the company experienced some financial woes at the time and went south soon afterwards. Unfortunately, so did the proposed mutant TV show along with it. Truth be told, there wasn't much to get excited about here. Although, one of the most laughable things is Wolverine's random Australian accent. Someone obviously didn't get the memo that Logan is actually Canadian, but at least it must make Hugh Jackman proud to look back and see another fellow countryman in the role before him. Watching X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men, we're reminded of the old adage "don't cry over spilt milk." The series didn't pan out, but out of its ashes, we received the far superior X-Men: The Animated Series. It's like your wife divorcing you, but you end up with Emily Ratajkowski. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Justice League Of America Sometimes, as much as we love these characters, it's best that bad ideas fall flat on their face before they can do more damage in the long run. A prime example of this is 1997's proposed Justice League of America TV series. When the basic premise of the show is an unemployed Barry Allen and Guy Gardner as a software salesman, you know there's no hope in hell that it will be any good. And guess what? It wasn't. It's like someone read Watchmen for the first time and said, "Wow. We can merge this franchise's concept with the Justice League and get some washed-up actors to play the roles. Comic book fans will love it because they love everything! It'll be like printing money." Attempting to be The Room of superhero shows, the costume designs were shockingly bad and many of the actors were overweight for the roles, looking like stuffed colorful sausages running around the city. The dialogue and acting weren't any better, either, proving that no matter what the quality of Zack Snyder's Justice League ends up being, we can rest assured that it'll never be this bad. Justice League of America is the perfect example of a production company not giving a damn about the characters and going for a smash-and-cash grab. We feel dirty even looking at the images of this pilot. Generation X If you ever want to be reminded about why 90s fashion was the worst, look no further than the pilot for 1996's Generation X, which aired as a TV movie. Not only does the cinematography look as dreadful as any given episode of Touched By An Angel, but its script is just as (if not even more) atrocious. Also, what was up with the acid trip colors? Look, credit to the producers for trying something different and attempting to bring this mutant team to life on the small screen, but it was probably doomed from the start when Heather McComb was roped in to play Jubilee and Finola Hughes as Emma Frost. Also, when new characters had to be created because the original ones had superpowers that would've resulted in expensive special effects, you knew this was going to be a low-budget affair. Even so, Generation X is still hovering around the Internet and you could probably find it on YouTube right now. We suggest giving it one watch for a good laugh and then never speaking about it afterwards. It'll be our little secret, okay? Bruce Wayne Before Smallville, there was supposed to be Bruce Wayne. Screenwriter Tim McCanlies pitched his idea to Tollin/Robbins Productions about a series following a teenage Wayne as he embarks on his path to becoming Gotham City's Dark Knight. Impressed with his concept and different approach to the character, the production company bought the rights and shopped the series around to the networks. Initially, the WB Television Network loved the idea and felt it would be their next big hit. But they hit a bump in the road rather quickly: there was an internal battle between Warner's TV and film divisions over the use of Batman. After the titanic failure of Batman & Robin, the film side of the WB lot wanted to get the Caped Crusader back on track on their terms – and the TV show ended up being a casualty of this internal war. In a way, we did get to see this idea come to fruition in Gotham, but we can't help wonder if Bruce Wayne would've been a better series overall. At least Tollin/Robbins persisted with a similar idea and we got to see the terrific Smallville instead. Hellfire When the news of a Hellfire TV series was released along with that of Legion, it seemed like quite a strange idea at the time. Granted, we don't think anyone gave the latter a chance in hell of succeeding, either, and it actually ended up becoming one of the best shows of 2017, but a show about the X-Men's Hellfire Club? How utterly bizarre. That said, FOX came to its senses fairly quickly and realized that The Gifted would make far more sense for their audience, and did a quick U-turn on the series. We still can't help but wonder what could've been, though, especially since the characters were an undisputed highlight of 2011's X-Men: First Class and have a rich history in the comic books. Whether we'll ever see the high-society mutants again in a live-action adaptation is anyone's guess at the moment. But we can only hope that it's not goodbye forever. Seriously, who wouldn't want to see more of Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw in the X-Men universe? Most Wanted It seems like Adrianne Palicki has the worst luck with TV pilots. In 2011, Marvel's Jeph Loeb announced that a Mockingbird TV series was in development, even though no one had ever asked for it. Over time, plans changed (presumably after someone figured out that no one cares except for five people) and the character was introduced in the second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. instead. After the popularity of Palicki's Bobbi Morse and Nick Blood's Lance Hunter on the show, however, a pilot was ordered for a spinoff series titled Most Wanted. But ABC decided to pass on it - not once but twice. That tells you all you need to know about it and the possibility of it ever happening. In all honesty, there was never any need or call for this show to begin with. There are far more interesting characters in the Marvel universe that deserve their own series, and Mockingbird is at the bottom of the totem pole (sorry, not sorry). Hell, even an Aunt May cooking program would be more welcome than this. Aquaman Oh, look, another pilot starring Adrianne Palicki that didn't pan out. How shocking! Maybe she's the bad luck charm for comic book shows? Nonetheless, this one wasn't strictly about her, but Justin Hartley's Arthur "A.C." Curry, AKA Aquaman. Also, how Mills & Boon does the above promo pic from the pilot look? After the resounding success of Smallville, creators Al Gough and Miles Millar combined their powers and developed a pilot for the famous Atlantean who likes to ride on seahorses. However, after the merger of the WB and UPN, the resulting CW Network decided not to pick up the series after all. As with these sorts of things, the project went poof, vanishing into thin air like it had never existed in the first place. Judging by the fan reaction to the first episode, though, Aquaman had serious potential to be a decent show and another DC TV hit. Sadly, we never got to see what could've been and this ended up as a lost effort. But hey, at least James Wan's film is looking pretty badass and Jason Mamoa is the real deal as Mr. Curry, so that's some solace. Well, that's it for now, peeps! Tell us, which of these superhero TV shows would you liked to have seen? As always, please sound off in the comments section down below.