WHAT'S COOKING: A trio of comic book-styled, crime-fighting superheroines.
WHAT ARE THEY UP TO: Beating bad guys in a now Batman-less New Gotham
City.
WHEN & WHERE CAN YOU FIND 'EM: Wednesdays 9 p.m., The WB
WHY IN THE WORLD: Because the executive producers behind the popular
Smallville think they can make lightning strike twice.
HOW'S IT GOING DOWN: Loosely based on the DC comic of the same name,
Birds of Prey tells the story of three superheroines determined to carry on
Batman's fight for justice after the Dark Knight mysteriously disappears from
New Gotham City.
After being shot and paralyzed by the Joker, former Batgirl Barbara Gordon is
left to carry on the good fight confined to a wheelchair. Focusing her skills on
cybernetics and weapons design, she adopts the codename Oracle and mentors the
secret daughter of Catwoman and Batman-a meta-human named Huntress-shaping her
into the hero Gordon once was. After another girl walks into their lives, a
teenager with strange telepathic abilities named Dinah (a modified version of
the comic's Black Canary), the crime-fighting trio is complete.
"The biggest change that we made [is that] the Huntress is kind of a day player
in the comic Birds of Prey," says executive producer Laeta Kalogridis. "She
shows up every so often and she's not a regular. It's pretty much Black Canary
and Oracle. Honestly what happened was I had always been very enamored with the
Huntress from the pre-Crisis DC. [A reference to the 1986 miniseries that
altered the continuity for the publisher's entire line of comics.] I always
liked the one before [Crisis] and always really wanted to see her explored on
television or in a movie. So this was an opportunity to do that and give her the
same kind of interaction with Oracle that Black Canary had. As soon as I choose
to do that, then we decided using Black Canary as [the apprentice] character
wouldn't really work."
Traditionally, this kind of high concept would never have flown with stodgy
network executives. However, the show's producers had proven themselves by
redefining the Superman mythos just one season earlier in yet another WB series.
"The success of Smallville certainly paved the way for Birds of Prey," says
executive producer Brian Robbins. "But this is a different show, it's a
different world and I think audiences will see the show much differently than
Smallville."
Article written by: Anthony C. Ferrante and Eric Moro
From: Birds of Prey Online