For a long time, it looked like Disturbia/I Am Number Four director DJ Caruso would be bringing the world an adaptation of Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s sprawling, beloved graphic novel series Y: The Last Man. But after the project stumbled in development, things went very quiet. New Line appears to still be committed to the cause, however, and the studio has hired Dan Trachtenberg to fill the vacant director’s chair.

Trachtenberg kicked off his career with ads for such companies as Lexus and Coke and also made a splash thanks to a short based on the Portal game (you can check that out below).

The Y project has been in development since 2006 with Caruso overseeing scripts from Carl Ellsworth, Matthew Friedman and Stephen Scaia. His Disturbia/Eagle Eye star Shia LaBeouf had been itching to take on the role of Yorick, who becomes the last man on Earth after a plague wipes out almost everything else with an XY chromosome. Struggling to find his sister in a world now populated only with women (and his capuchin monkey, Ampersand), he faces tough quest.

Given the complex nature of the story’s plot, getting the idea condensed into a film has been no easy task, which likely accounts for the long slog through development. Caruso had wanted to make a trilogy; what Trachtenberg, who is also attached to make Crime Of The Century for Universal, ends up doing will be key.