Y: The Last Man is Not Coming Soon To a Theater Near You

The long-in-development film adaptation of Vertigo's Y: The Last Man is dead, according its [...]

By Russ Burlingame

The long-in-development film adaptation of Vertigo's Y: The Last Man is dead, according its planned director. The rights to the property have reverted to the comic book's creators.

This isn't the first time that's happened, of course, and Hollywood continues to be interested, at least in optioning the property if not in actually making it.

But filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg isn't sure that'll be an option again, as he seems to think Vaughan is more committed to comics than Hollywood.

He followed up with Slashfilm after that tweet, saying in part that he was always skeptical of the property coming to movies instead of TV and that at least fans will always have the comic, even if it never comes to the screen.

Here's his statement, in part; you can read the whole thing at the link above.

The rights reverted back to Brian quite a few months ago.

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 who's 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 we've been getting in TV so readily now— great characters, RELATIONSHIPS, world building and genre re-combination.

...

The script was essentially the first two trades. Taking inspiration from the original Star Wars (Episode 4)- we wanted to tell a complete story…but 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…

...

I'm not sure Brian will ever want to do anything more with it and I'm not sure that he needs to. His latest comics SAGA and THE PRIVATE EYE are great and we should be reading them. His "never-been-made" screenplays are some of my favorite reads ever (Roundtable, specifically).  I hope we can convince him to write us some more awesome original movies and TV— but I think comics is where his heart lies.

Alas…we will always have that thing we fell in love with— that's not going anywhere…

Creator Brian K. Vaughan hasn't responded yet. Artist Pia Guerra hasn't addressed it directly, but she did comment on another TV series with a "similar premise on Twitter:

...Indeed they do.

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