Actors appear in failed pilots all the time, but the recent lament by Milana Vayntrub that she still thinks about that time she almost got to play Squirrel Girl in a New Warriors series that was ordered for a full 10 episodes but abandoned and left on the scrapheap has reignited curiosity in Marvel’s many failed small screen endeavors.
Prior to being destroyed by Kevin Feige when he ascended to the role of chief creative officer and decided he wanted to start his own canon from scratch, Marvel Television saw plenty of projects fail to escape from development hell, but there’s one star who ended up being even unluckier than Vayntrub on account of adding a pair of failed DC shows to a Marvel pilot that didn’t get picked up.
Sure, she got to play Bobbi Morse in 31 episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but Marvel’s Most Wanted never gave Adrianne Palicki the spin-off series she was in line for. Then again, maybe the actress had gotten used to comic book failure after playing the villainous Nadia in 2006’s Aquaman starring Justin Hartley that aired on The WB but ended up being passed on.
Or perhaps it was her ill-fated stint as the title hero of the buried Wonder Woman pilot from 2011 that gained a level of infamy in its own right after NBC declined the opportunity to not just turn it into a full-blown episodic adventure, but even air it on the network.
Palicki hasn’t played a comic book role since Marvel’s Most Wanted fell apart, and after three major setbacks in a decade, can you really blame her?