Y: The Last Man is a comic book series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra published by Vertigo Comics beginning in 2002. The story is essentially about a guy called Yorick who survives the apparent simultaneous death of every male mammal as they possess the Y chromosome [barring the same man's pet monkey] on Earth via a plague. Accompanied by his Capuchin monkey Ampersand, he makes his way halfway across the globe to find his girlfriend Beth with the aid of Agent 355. Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse, and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of men, their survivor guilt, and the knowledge that barring a rapid, major scientific breakthrough or other extraordinary happening humanity is doomed to extinction. Director Louis Leterrier [Clash of the Titans] has been attached to the feature film version of Y: The Last Man for what seems like forever as New Line keeps sitting on the property/rights instead of getting something, anything, done with it.
Today Leterrier has spoken about what he could do with the project, even possibly spinning it into a television series.
"I'm surprised that it hasn't gotten made yet," Leterrier told MTV News. "The first time I read it, I was in France and doing my little movies, and I didn't think I would ever have access to these kinds of movies. Midway through 'Clash of the Titans,' I was like, 'What's going on with 'Y The Last Man'?' I called one of the producers and asked what was going on, and he said it was available. I said, 'Let's go!'"
"It's kind of stuck somewhere now," said the filmmaker. "I still want to do it. I'm passionate about it. But it's stuck. People don't know what to do with it. I'd love to do it, but I need people to finance it, and the people financing it don't know if it's a TV show a movie, or what it should be."
"It could play as a movie, but it would be very interesting as a TV show," he said. "[It wouldn't work as] one large film, no. I'd love to do it as a TV show or a three-part series."
"I like the idea of a TV show," he continued. "You take time to get to know your characters. You can introduce a lot of characters. You don't need your three-action set pieces that you usually need for movies. Frankly, with HBO and Showtime and cable shows, the DVD box sets and all, you can have a product that doesn't make you feel like as soon as it's projected, it's thrown away. It's really a piece of art."
So New Line, are you taking notes here on what Leterrier is saying? If they were to turn it around into a television show like The Walking Dead with Leterrier on board, it could be a major hit. The material is perfect for serialization, its a fricken Comic to begin with.
