TITANS Fall and SUPERGIRL Soars, NBC Goes POWERLESS
You win some, and you lose some.
In the “win” column: Supergirl, nabbing a 2016 People’s Choice Award for Best New TV Drama, beating out Blindspot, Limitless, Minority Report, Code Black, Heroes Reborn, and Quantico, among other freshman shows.
Star Melissa Benoist, also a presenter at the event, accepted the award on behalf of the show.
Also winning: the new sitcom Powerless, also a DC property, picked up by NBC. Developed by A to Z creator Ben Queen, the show is a workplace comedy (think The Office) set at an insurance company in the DC Comics universe, and it’s about the working lives of normal, powerless people in a world of superheroes and supervillains.
According to Deadline, the show won’t feature any of the marquee characters such as Superman or Batman.
Queen will write and executive produce with Michael Patrick Jann, who’s also set to direct.
However, in the “lose” column: Titans, the drama focused on the sidekicks and teen heroes usually known as the Teen Titans. In this particular iteration, the group would have included Robin, Batgirl, Starfire, Raven, Hawk, and Dove.
At the Television Critics Association winter press tour, network president Kevin Reilly made the announcement, saying, “We just decided it wasn’t quite where we wanted to go.”
Where Reilly wants to take the network is drastically different from where it is now, and Titans had been near a pilot order in September 2014, several months before Reilly took over as president. Now, however, with this announcement and the news that Rizolli & Isles will end, replaced with shows like Animal Kingdom (crime family drama) and Good Behavior (con artist just out of prison), it’s clear the traditional cop procedural and any superhero stories won’t fit.
Perhaps the Titans, like John Constantine, will find their way to the CW version of Blüdhaven…
