After years in the wilderness that is film development trying to find that elusive greenlight, the rights to an adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn’s beloved graphic novel series Y: The Last Man reverted to the writer. And he’s now part of an effort to find a new home for the story on screen – TV screens{
The comic book series, created by Vaughn and Pia Guerra, focuses on Yorick Brown, an amateur escape artist who has become the lone male human survivor after a mysterious plague killed off everyone else with a Y chromosome — including all male animals. Except, that is, for his pet capuchin monkey, Ampersand, who follows him around like Ross's Marcel, but in a much friendlier, less irritating way.
Now living in a world entirely filled with women, Yorick heads out on a mission to discover why the tragedy befell the world and to look for his girlfriend Beth, who he last heard was halfway across the world in Australia.
New Line had been struggling to adapt the comic book series into a film for years, with people such as D.J. Caruso, David Goyer and Shia LaBeouf all involved in various incarnations. But the sprawling tale just never quite seemed to fit the more limited running time of film.
Now Vaughn, alongside Color Force producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson are developing the idea for US cable channel FX, which outside of HBO and the other paid outlets, feels like a good home for the series. FX allows its series to push certain boundaries, and would be able to handle most of what Vaughn and Guerra got away with in the comic (violence, complicated social issues, full monkey nudity).
For the moment, it’s simply in an embryonic state: the producers are taking meetings to find a writer to work with Vaughn and the potential show doesn’t have any kind of slot on the network. But it certainly feels more like a positive step than languishing in a film studio’s vaults.