Up until Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot came along, Lynda Carter’s TV series was the definitive Wonder Woman adaptation, but a cack-handed attempt to reboot the Amazonian superhero for the small screen ended up securing its place in infamy on account on how awful it was purported to be.
There was no shortage of hype behind the project, with the 2011 pilot being written by acclaimed television veteran David E. Kelley, who boasted the likes of L.A. Law, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Ally McBeal, and Boston Legal among his back catalogue, while the genre itself was surging in renewed popularity thanks to smash hit blockbusters like Iron Man and The Dark Knight.
Adrianne Palicki took on the title role, with Elizabeth Hurley, Cary Elwes, and Pedro Pascal among the supporting cast, while Christina Aguilera provided the theme song. All of the individual pieces were there for Wonder Woman to become a major success for NBC, but nobody seemed to account for the fact that it would suck, and suck hard.
In fact, it was so bad that the pilot was never officially aired, even if it didn’t take too long for the entire 43-minute shambles to be uploaded surreptitiously onto YouTube by enterprising pirates. Even now, the sheer slapdash nature of the entire operation is capable of causing chaos on social media, as shown by the comments and replies to a resurfaced fight scene and some cringeworthy dialogue.
On the plus side, no matter what people make of James Gunn’s upcoming Themysciran prequel Paradise Lost, there’s surely no chance it’ll turn out any worse than the last time the Wonder Woman lore was given the live-action television treatment.