Supergirl is coming to television thanks to Greg Berlanti. Berlanti is the executive producer of the very popular Arrow and the upcoming series The Flash . Supergirl will be developed by Berlanti and Ali Adler, who worked on his ABC series, No Ordinary Family , and the show will be produced by Warner Bros. TV, which handles all television for DC Comics at the moment.
Deadline reports that the new show will be a fresh interpretation of the Supergirl mythos, which is a nice way of saying they’re going to alter things a bit from the comics, and legions of fanboys are going to be up in arms… although, the comic books themselves seem to have a difficult time deciding just who Supergirl is.
The most popular version of the Supergirl character first appeared in DC’s Action Comics in 1959. In that version, Supergirl is actually Superman’s cousin, and her name is Kara Zor-El. She possesses the same powers as Superman, as well as his weakness to Kryptonite.
Supergirl was killed off in 1985 during the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” limited edition series. Supergirl then came back in thee different incarnations, none of them having a familial relationship with Superman. Matrix, Linda Davers and Cir-El were all Supergirl for a time, but each of the books lacked a certain spark and were canceled due to low readership.
In 2004, DC brought Kara Zor-El back as the girl from Krypton, appearing in Issue 8 of the Superman/Batman comic book series.
By all guesses, the Supergirl featured in the upcoming television series will most probably mirror the most popular comic book one, Kara Zor-El, Superman’s cousin. The series doesn’t have a name just yet. Though the name of The Flash television series is dead on, other DC series’ tend to be more abstract when it comes to their show names: Lois & Clarke , Smallville , Arrow , Gotham,/em>, etc. It’s almost as if they’re scared to admit to viewers that the show is based on a comic book character even though comic book superheroes are the most successful box-office draw in the world right now. Go figure.
Two relatively mundane choices for the show’s title being thrown around right now? Super and Girl .
WBTV will be pitching the Supergirl project to all the major networks in a few weeks the same way they did with Gotham . Warner Bros. is clearly hoping for the same success they had with the Batman-inspired series, which landed a huge committment at Fox.
Since the boom of the superhero movies starting with Chris Nolan’s Batman films and Iron Man’s cinematic rise to power, there’s been a steady cry from fans to include more standalone female character films, and to this point, we haven’t seen any. Scarlett Johansson’s fans have been adamant that Black Widow get her own film, (including Game of Thrones director Neil Marshall according to Screen Rant ), and DC had up to recently been ridiculed for not considering a standalone Wonder Woman film (something they’ve all but confirmed as coming in the near future).
Perhaps Supergirl is DC realizing that female superheroes have a place on television as well.
[Image via Fan Pop ]