CBS will be trying again with superheroes, this time with
Supergirl premiering on October 26, 2015, in the US.
Twenty-four-year-old Kara Zor-El, who was taken in by the Danvers family when she was 13 after being sent away from Krypton, must learn to embrace her powers after previously hiding them. The Danvers family teaches Kara to be careful with her powers, until she has to reveal them during an unexpected disaster, setting her on her journey of heroism.
Genre fans might like the casting of Helen Slater as Kara's foster mother. Slater portrayed Supergirl in the 1984
Supergirl movie and will be a "guest" actor as opposed to a regular or recurring. Another guest actor will be Dean Cain as Kara's foster father. Cain played Superman in the Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman TV series that ran on ABC 1993-1997.
Crossovers? Greg Berlanti is the producer of both
The Flash and
Arrow with both airing on The CW. The CW is owned by CBS so it would seem to be pretty obvious that there'd be some continuity between the shows. But, alas, no, in what is one my biggest grips with the DC Universe shows & movies, the Supergirl series at the moment will be in it's own universe per CBS exec Nina Tassler who has said "
those two shows are on a different network. So I think we'll keep Supergirl to ourselves for awhile." In August 2015, Tassler said that while there were no plans at the time to do crossover story lines, the three series would have crossover promotions. So take advantage of the existing DC shows on The CW to advertise a show on the parent network but not bother with story content.
The CW President, Mark Pedowitz has expressed regret at passing up Supergirl while it was still in development. "
We hadn’t launched The Flash yet, we weren’t ready to take on another DC property. In hindsight we probably should’ve gone that direction… Sometime you lose great shows."
With ABC, being owned by Disney that now owns Marvel, being the home of Marvel Universe broadcast projects (and Netflix, a Marvel business partner, being the home of Marvel streaming projects), it would've been quite a coup for CBS to have consolidated it's DCU projects under one roof with plenty of crossovers. But, no, yet again we'll get another DC project that shares nothing with the larger DCU family of movies & TV projects. Even in the voice-over of the intro (see video below) Kara says "Earth doesn't have just one hero anymore" implying her cousin, Superman. What they heck, they couldn't even acknowledge the upcoming
Batman vs. Superman movie?!