The comic-book series Y: The Last Man is widely regarded as one of the greatest stories ever published in the medium, and after years of stalled attempts at bringing it to the screen in various forms, Brian Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s epic, post-apocalyptic saga might finally be headed to television.
A new (but unconfirmed) report indicates that the story of the last man on Earth (and his monkey) will be developed as a TV series for the FX network.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the network is currently looking for a writer to develop the Y: The Last Man series with Vaughan.
Originally published in 2002 and running for 60 issues, Y: The Last Man chronicled the globe-spanning adventures of Yorick Brown, the sole remaining human male after a mysterious event causes the death of every living creature on the planet with a Y chromosome — except for Yorick and his monkey, Ampersand. Together with Ampersand, Yorick must navigate a strange new world in which being the last man on Earth can be very, very dangerous to him and everyone around him.
Along his journey, Yorick teams up with a government operative and finds himself caught up in a mission to determine exactly why he survived this strange, catastrophic event.
The series was originally optioned by film studio New Line in 2007 and wavered between being developed as a trilogy of films and a single, standalone feature. That project stalled when director D.J. Caruso exited, only to have development pick up again in 2012. The second attempt at adapting Y: The Last Man for the big screen fell apart shortly thereafter, and the rights to the series reverted back to Vaughan and Guerra last year.
This week’s report indicates that the network is currently searching for both a writer to team with Vaughan and a director for the series.
Vaughan already has some experience in the television world after working as a writer on Lost and the recent Under the Dome series, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name. He also writes the ongoing, award-winning, sci-fi comic-book series Saga.
FX has yet to confirm the news regarding Y: The Last Man, so it’s probably best to consider the project entirely unofficial until the network says otherwise.
