Rileah Vanderbilt, an actress with a long list of geek-cred-worthy roles on her resume, posted the recently completed concept short from Rainfall Films. In under three minutes, the short manages to do what David E. Kelley was unable to accomplish in his failed pilot for FOX: get the look and feel right for the Amazonian Princess, switching between fighting a crew of mayhem-inducing gunmen and a flashback showing why the brawny men with guns are no match for Diana.

In her post about the short, Vanderbilt explains why the project means so much to her, and the filmmakers at Rainfall:

Now, [we’re hearing] rumors that there’s a new script for the CW, AMAZON that execs have shelved for the time being to focus on The Flash… seriously, The Flash?! Not that I have anything against Barry Allen is his fantastic red spandex suit, but why can’t we figure out how to make Wonder Woman work? That’s the question that Rainfall Films has set out to answer with this short concept piece created to get Hollywood thinking differently about this iconic character.

The scoreboard for getting Wonder Woman her screen time has made fans scratch their collective heads for years. Joss Whedon was hired by Warner Brothers to helm a theatrical feature in 2007, and rejected the script treatment. (Whedon says his version of WONDER WOMAN would have worked, and with his AVENGERS success, you can’t help but fathom WB’s logic.) David E. Kelley produced a television pilot in 2011 starring Adrianne Palicki that wound up – mercifully – getting the axe and never seeing the light of day. Well, until the Web got hold of it.

While on a promo tour for DRIVE, director Nicholas Winding Refn told me off-camera that he would love a crack at Wonder Woman:

The whole idea of a woman who is basically more powerful than any man – and who will always be that, and comes from a society of women who are more powerful than men – is an interesting theme that I think can be very contemporary.

With all of the money being thrown at comic-book heroes – both by studios and audiences – it’s shameful that Wonder Woman hasn’t made it to the party. (Almost as shameful: the fact Wonder Woman is the only female superhero in the discussion. That’s a topic for a whole separate conversation.) The time is right, the climate is right. With this short from Rainfall, we can only hope our wait for Wonder Woman to save us is almost over.

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