Why Powerless Changed It’s Premise
Why Powerless changed from a random insurance company to Wayne Security
Powerless was always an office workplace comedy based around ordinary people having to deal with the realities of living in a world filled with super-powered beings. That hasn’t changed.
But originally it was about an insurance company that helped people rebuild their lives after the damage caused by battles between superheroes and supervillains. This was what the early trailers were all about. There was even a pilot based on this idea shown at last year’s San Diego Comic Con, and it got a pretty good reception from what I recall.
But at some point this part of Powerless changed drastically. Now it’s still about helping normal people deal with being in a world with superheroes and supervillains, but the company is now Wayne Security. Owned by Wayne Enterprises. And it no longer deals in insurance. Instead it develops technology to help people survive catastrophic super battles. So why the change? Executive Producer Patrick Schumacker explains:
"About 15 weeks into this, we decided that the insurance company angle wasn’t really generating the type of stories that we wanted to be telling."
So Schumaker & Justin Halpern sat down with DC head Geoff Johns and knocked out how to tell your classic workplace comedy stories in a way that really works within the DC Universe.
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Well, I’m not saying I’m super confident about the new direction, and I never saw the original pilot, but it seems that this is at least a better direction than where they were originally going. The first few trailers I saw just seemed cringeworthy. After this new change in direction, Powerless at least seems to have the potential to be funny. We’ll find out if the change worked when the show premieres Thursday February 2nd on NBC.