Despite having the rights to the property for a decade and a director in place for over a year, New Line has failed to get an adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's comic book Y: The Last Man in time to retain the rights. Now, the gauntlet has finally fallen, and the film is officially dead in the water. Director Dan Trachtenberg broke the news himself this week via Twitter: https://twitter.com/DannyTRS/status/514946475181498368 The news may be disappointing, but it's not at all surprising. The studio's had trouble getting the film made for quite some time now, and never quite figured out how to bring the sixty issue sci-fi series to the big screen. Trachtenberg spoke with /Film about his vision for the film shortly after announcing it had fallen apart:
I had such a great time working on that project and am truly sad the things we were cooking up can no longer happen. Like everyone else whos a fan of the series I had always wished it either remain in its comic book form. Or, if it must be made, a TV series would be the only thing that would suffice. However, the big screen and the small screen has changed drastically since Y came out and I think so much of the great TV in our current golden age has been directly or indirectly inspired by Y the Last Man. I started getting excited about bringing to the BIG screen what weve been getting in TV so readily now great characters, RELATIONSHIPS, world building and genre re-combination. Truly- I was excited to make an ADVENTURE movie, with swashbuckle, that was fun and funny but had something to say. Which is something that is distinctly BKV. Having real, true, honest ,people stuff amidst the big, fun, action stuff. We were in many ways quite faithful to the comic, though some characters were combined and some events re-arranged and some brief moments of action we dug into to create bigger action/adventure sequences. The script was essentially the first two trades. Taking inspiration from the original Star Wars (Episode 4)- we wanted to tell a complete storybut not the whole story. Hoping that, in success, we could get tell the rest of our serialized adventure. Raiders of the Lost Ark was referenced a lot. Midnight Run and Big Trouble in Little China were referenced a lot. Willow and Ladyhawke I may have referenced a little too often In the end, working with all the producers and the writers was a great experience. And getting to meet Brian, who has been such an inspiration to me over the years was incredible. Hes as great a person as he is a writer. And now Y the Last Man is back where it should be, with its creator.
James is a 24 year old writer and filmmaker living in Portland, OR. He attended college for graphic design and writes for various sources on the web about film, television, and entertainment.
You can view all of his work on his website, www.thereeljames.wordpress.com
