Why Can't (DC) Female Superheroes be Successfully Adapted to Live-Action?

 
Over at The Mary Sue, they have released footage from the failed Wonder Woman pilot. Go watch it.

I completely agree with their critique that it would've worked in the 90s.  It would've been a modern-day Xena ripoff, but it would've worked.  In the comments, one blogger spoke to DC's inability (thus far) to successfully adapt female superheroes to live-action forms of entertainment - television and film specifically.  It got me thinking: Why are DC female superheroes so horribly handled in live-action adaptations?







Someone (on another blog discussing whether or not DC would do a film series like Marvel) asserted that DC superheroes are less suitable for live-action adaptations than those of Marvel because of their costumes and unrealistic origins.  I don't agree with that.  The success of the Batman, Superman, and even Green Lantern (it was not the origins of the character that people disliked)  films weaken that argument; and, outside of the DCU, Hellboy and X-men.  So, is this most recent failure, like the others, because the lead character, the superhero, is a woman? 

If yes, then is this inability to adapt superheroines specifically a DC issue? or, If Marvel made a film or television series based on one of their superheroines (I've read rumors of She Hulk), would the adaptation be just as poorly executed?

Yes, Pfeiffer's Cat Woman and the female X-men were handled well, but they were supporting cast (for lack of a better term).  I realize not as many female superheroes have headlined their own comics for as long as their male counterparts, but they are equally dynamic.

Marvel has been trying to expand the diversity of their Universe (both in characters and in readers) for some time, but DC seems . . .  less inclined to do so.  So, perhaps this is just a weakness of DC, and Marvel would not have the same problem with one of their superheroines; or, is this an industry-wide inability to handle female superheroes as leads?  Are superheroines still so secondary and "foreign" to writers that they cannot (yet) be adapted successfully?

I'm just writing this entry in a (rare) case of train-of-thought pondering; but, unfortunately, I do think that the lead character/superhero being female is the problem with DC adaptations.  Birds of Prey, Cat Woman, and Wonder Woman all point to that; and, one successful adaptation from the late 70s is not enough to dissuade me.

Seeing as Marvel has not tried to create a film trilogy or television show around even one of their superheroines, DC is not all bad.  I don't want to unfairly condemn DC as sexist, or suggests that they think less of their superheroines (although their attitude towards women and superheroines as displayed in their character designs for the DCnU, most notably the previously discussed Harley Quinn costume, could suggests otherwise).  However, that DC has had two very successful films franchises spanning four, soon to be five, decades lead by male superheroes, but only 1 successful superheroine-centered adaptation, indicates a certain gender-specific ineptitude.

We don't understand either Wonder Woman :(