NEW LINE CLOSE TO GREENLIGHTING A ‘Y: THE LAST MAN’ MOVIE?
Vulture ran a story today that claims New Line Cinema is very close to moving forward on a film adaptation of Y:The Last Man, the excellent DC Comics series written by Brian K. Vaughn. If you’re unfamiliar with the premise of Y (shame on you if you are, because it’s amazing), it’s about a young guy named Yorick who one day wakes up in a world in which every living male mammal on Earth – except for he and his monkey Ampersand – suddenly dies of mysterious causes. The simultaneous death of everything with a Y chromosome causes planes to fall out of the sky, and basically unleashes hysteria and chaos upon the Earth. Yorick must then travel across the world – all the while disguising his gender under a gas mask – to find his girlfriend in Australia.
The suits at New Line are apparently psyched about the latest screenplay by former Jericho writers Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia. Jericho was a mediocre TV show that struggled mightily in the ratings, got the axe from CBS, was resurrected by its fans, then cancelled again because it was even more unwatchable the second time around. Still, Jericho was thematically very similar to Y:The Last Man, so hiring Federman and Scaia makes a lot of sense. However, it begs the question – why wasn’t the guy who actually created the series brought on for a draft? Brian K. Vaughn is a fantastic writer who made the transition to screenwriting from the world of graphic novels, serving as a staff writer/co-producer on the hit ABC series LOST. Certainly he deserved a crack at his own property.
If you ask me though (and no one ever does, dammit), a film is not the right way to go with Y: The Last Man at all. Like The Walking Dead, Y ’s narrative focus on characters travelling from place to place in an effort to survive and find answers to some mysterious questions is tailor-made for television. Y would be absolutely perfect as an hour-long action/sci-fi drama that played out over four or five seasons. A film would sacrifice too much of the story and condense things far too much. An episodic TV series would provide the necessary time to present the full scope of Yorick and crew’s various adventures throughout a world that has devolved into chaos. Just think about how awesome it would be to tune in to AMC for a two-hour block of Y:The Last Man, followed by The Walking Dead! Unimaginable geekgasms my friends. Unimaginable.
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