From 2002-2008 there was no better comic book anywhere than Brian K. Vaughn's Y: The Last Man. I think you could arguably call it one of the greatest comics of the modern age, a thoughtful, socially aware epic following Yorick Brown, the literal last man on earth left to fend for himself in a world full of women. The series dealt pretty extensively with gender identification issues, but also had tons of action and deep sci-fi elements. After a plague hits the planet, Yorick and his pet monkey are the only males to survive. A film adaptation has been on the table for years, and as Vaughn became more popular outside the comics world as a writer on Lost, it seemed more likely to happen. D.J. Caruso(Disturbia) was attached to direct at one point, with Louis Leterrier also expressing some interest. Shia Labeouf had been mentioned as a possibility to star, but turned it down because the role was too similar to what he'd been doing in Transformers. That still boggles my mind he thought something that ignorant. Yet nothing has happened, and the film has been on hold ever since.
New Line appears to finally be ready to get the ball rolling again, as THR reports that relatively new writers, Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia, are in final talks to pen the script. The writers have some experience adapting comics before as writers of the Fox series, Human Target. Carl Ellsworth had written one draft of the script back when Caruso was on board, but now they'll be starting from scratch.
A feature film is the worst possible way to do this, with multiple story arcs spread out over the course of just a few years, each with their own unique insights. Maybe the execs at New Line will smarten up and see that Y: The Last Man would be better served on the small screen, ala The Walking Dead.
Now....who do we want to play Yorick? What about Agent 355?
