Cast-Off! Your Final Three Wonder Woman Contenders

After a slight delay due to Thanksgiving week, we’ve finally tabulated your choices for an actress to play Wonder Woman in an upcoming Wonder Woman film.

True, said “upcoming Wonder Woman” film is still a figment of the imagination of fans, producers and would-be directors, while we figure studio chiefs are wrestling with the problems inherent in adapting Wonder Woman to screen (of which there are many, and best left for another day) – but that doesn’t mean we can’t cast the leading role. So, a week or so back, we opened up the voting for who Newsarama readers thought could fill Wonder Woman’s boots, and today, as we did with our Captain America Cast-Off, we’re down to three contenders. They are:

Megan Fox (she of Transformers fame)
Morena Baccarin (she of Firefly fame)
Cobie Smulders* (she of who Joss Whedon wanted to play Wonder Woman fame, oh, and How I Met Your Mother)

The spread of actresses didn’t reach as far this time out compared to the candidates to play Captain America, and more emphasis was given to appearance. Of the “almosts” for Top Three, we saw Megan Gale (missed it by a hair), Lucy Lawless, Charisma Carpenter, Kate Beckinsale, Michele Ryan, and Eliza Dushku make strong showings. Surprisingly, Lena Headey and Evangeline Lilly, who we would’ve picked as contenders barely made appearances. Again, as with the Captain America casting, there was a strong trend towards as we’ve come to calling it “Christopher Reeve casting,” that is, get a barely, or unknown actress to play the role of Wonder Woman.

If you’re keeping an eye on it, it seems that Joss Whedon reach is mighty among fans – not only did Nathan Fillion (Mal on Whedon’s Firefly) come in as one of the top three choices for Captain America, the Wonder Woman suggestions were full of actresses who have worked with Whedon (Bacharin, Summer Glau, Eliza Dushku, etc), not to mention Whedon’s own choice for Wonder Woman, Cobie Smulders.

Also if interest in the suggestions, it seemed that ethnicity/nationality wasn’t as big of an issue as it was in the Captain America casting (where some readers – jokingly, we hope – suggested that a Canadian (Nathan Fillion) shouldn’t play Captain America). Traditionally, Wonder Woman has been portrayed as a statuesque beauty, more often than not, lily white, rather than faintly olive toned as one might expect one of her Greek descent to be. That said, Indian actresses Aishwarya Rai and Priyanka Chopra, Beyonce and adult actress Tera Patrick were mentioned by more than one reader, as was Rosario Dawson (though we think the suggestion of casting her as the Cheetah sounds a little cooler).

So – here we go then – we’ve got our top three, so let’s see them votes. We'll be back on Friday with the wrapup.

(*) – Oh, and yes, we know it was just announced that Smulders is pregnant. First off, congratulations, secondly, please don’t let that influence your voting. While this is dream casting, let’s also be realistic – with the track the Wonder Woman film has been on, Smulders’ child will be three before production begins. But hey – it’s fun to imagine!)