WALLER and PARADISE LOST May Not Be Dead at DC Studios After All
It turns out we may not need to dig graves for two of DC Studios’ long-gestating shows just yet.
Recent reports surrounding Waller and Paradise Lost made it sound like both projects had been completely scrapped, but that doesn’t appear to be the full story.
The two DC series have definitely lost some momentum at HBO, but they remain alive at DC Studios and could still eventually make their way to television.
Waller, the Peacemaker spinoff built around Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller, is no longer in active development at HBO. That’s obviously not the update fans hoping to see Davis return to the role were waiting for, especially since the series was originally positioned as one of the early television projects in the new DC Universe.
However, Waller hasn’t been officially tossed aside. The project remains in development at DC Studios, meaning Amanda Waller’s solo series still has a pulse even if it’s currently sitting much farther down the priority list.
The series was being written by Christal Henry and Jeremy Carver, with members of Team Peacemaker expected to appear alongside Davis. Considering how much Amanda Waller has been woven into DC Studios’ interconnected universe, there’s still plenty of room for the character and the proposed series to return when the timing works.
The situation is similar for Paradise Lost, the planned Wonder Woman-adjacent series centered on Themyscira and the Amazons who inhabit it. HBO has also put that project on the back burner, but sources indicate it could still move forward at some point.
When DC Studios co-head James Gunn first announced Paradise Lost in January 2023, it sounded like one of the more intriguing corners of the new DCU. Rather than simply serving as another Wonder Woman adventure, the series was pitched as a politically driven story exploring “the genesis and political intrigue of an island of all women.”
There’s a lot of cool material to mine from that idea. Themyscira has thousands of years of history, mythology, rivalries, power struggles, and Amazon culture to explore, and a series could dig into all of that without needing Wonder Woman herself to carry the story.
Both Waller and Paradise Lost were part of the initial DC Studios slate Gunn unveiled in early 2023. Since then, several of the projects announced alongside them have moved much further ahead.
DC Studios announced eight projects connected to its first storytelling chapter, and with several already released, filming, or otherwise moving through development, it’s hardly surprising that a couple of them have taken longer to come together.
Development schedules change. Priorities shift. Writers, filmmakers, actors, and larger plans for an interconnected universe can all affect when a project gets made. In this case, neither show appears to have reached the point where DC Studios is ready to officially kill it.
So, for now, Waller and Paradise Lost are better described as delayed rather than canceled. Whether either series eventually gets the green light remains to be seen, but both concepts still have plenty of potential.
They may be stuck waiting their turn, but these DC shows aren’t dead yet.