shiabanana
Despite years of speculation and wooing, it seems that should a Y THE LAST man movie ever get made, it will not star Shia LaBeouf< — the red hot male ingenue told Wizard mag he thought the role was too similar to his TRANSFORMERS role.

“You take Sam and you put a monkey on his shoulder,” said LaBeouf of Yorick’s sidekick Ampersand. “I don’t know if it’s that big a differential. It seems like he’s the ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation again.

He added, “I’m not willing to make that movie currently, and may be too old to play the role by the time it does come around.”

1 COMMENT

  1. Ofcourse it’s his right to not do a movie, but he’s wrong if he thinks Sam Witwicky and Yorick Brown are the same type of character.

  3. “Ofcourse it’s his right to not do a movie, but he’s wrong if he thinks Sam Witwicky and Yorick Brown are the same type of character.”

    Actually, he’s not right for Y: The Last Man movie if he thinks Sam Witwicky and Yorick Brown are the same type of character.

  4. His description of the character just sounds like Archetypal Movie Character #2, if you ask me. If these are the roles that he wants to stay away from, I’m afraid he’s gonna be waiting quite a long time for his next role.

  5. My thoughts exactly, Mike. I suppose we should all look out for “Shia LaBoeuf– Hard-Edged Cop Who Doesn’t Play By The Rules” now.

  11. Another happy customer here. We need someone who can be successfully snarky in that role, but in a subdued way. I’d kind of like Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He was awesome in Brick and I think he could do a good Yorick.

    Full Disclosure: Most of the reason I clicked this thread was to see if Pia posted something. I’ve seen her post here once or twice and I’d be fascinated to know who she would pick if it were up to her.

  15. “Sam Witwicky”

    In the cartoon, it was “Spike.”

    And in the comic, “Buster.”

    I imagine the stage production will feature music by Primus, and the character will be called “Sportsfan.”

    //Oo/\

  16. My heart is too aflutter from that photo to post anything intelligible …

    …

    OK… calmed down just enough to echo that Joseph Gordon-Levitt *would* be great for this role.

  18. I actually think he gets the point head on. He isn’t saying the movies are similar, just the characters. They involve a normal guy in an incredible situation. Yes, the plots are very different, but honestly, as characters they have very similar qualities. Most hero/comic movies play up the character, making them have super human like abilities and whatnot, while both these series rely on the fact that the main character is a fairly average person.

  19. Aren’t LOTS of movies about ordinary people in extraordinary situations?

    Shia makes me *roll eyes*.

  20. Before jumping on this guy you might consider that he has probably seen the actual script they plan to film.

    There’s no guarantee that the movie they want to make WON’T be more like Transformers than the comics.

  21. I must have missed the characters in the “Transformers” movie, though reliable sources have informed me that they’re supposedly in there somewhere.

    That being said, the concept of a Michael Bayesque “Y” sounds so mind-bendingly awful that I really want to see it. I imagine Agent 355 would spend a lot of screen time shouting “C’mon people, move move move!”.

  24. Well, er. I hope this isn’t a hint at the quality of the Y The Last Man movie script (Transformers? Really?), but I can’t say I’m unhappy.

    No offense to Shia, but he isn’t exactly what I think of when I think of Yorick.

  27. Well, I guess if you live five blocks away from that Walgreen’s you are certainly qualified to say with certainty that Shia is a “nitwit”.

    I agree with Justin Paul, the characters are similar at their core, although not identical, and I’m sure if he wanted to Shia would be able to make the characters sufficiently different than the one he plays in Transformers. But he doesn’t want to, and I don’t see where that is a problem. In fact, most people here seem to be happy he is not playing the character while at the same time angry at his reasons for not playing it. Would anything short of him saying “It’s a fabulous character, really the best ever in the history of popular culture, but I couldn’t possibly do it justice” have satisfied the internet?

  28. 1. Shia LaBeouf was in a little show called Even Stevens so I think he knows a a bit more than the rest of us about show business and acting A-THANK-YOU-VERY-MUCH.

    2. He’s actually got a point. Young white slacker lives a normal life when all of a sudden his world is thrust into chaos, in a completely sci-fi/fantasy kind of way. Now this young wise-cracker needs to overcome his arrested development in order to stay alive in a world completely over his head. I mean, yeah, there’s a bit more to it than that, but ostensibly that’s all it is. Most actors today tend to play different variations of themselves when they act, and while I am apparently one of the few people in the world who doesn’t mind Shia LaBeouf I’m positive that he’d play both roles the same way. Also, I just typed up around 125 words on Y: The Last Man casting choices. What am I on the Newsarama boards?

  32. I’ve never seen Even Stevens, but everything else I’ve seen Shia LeBeouf in, he seemed uninspired, kinda boring. “Y” is an enjoyable story. The above hit the same chord for me, that Megan Fox not wanting to play Wonder Woman did. Whew..!

  35. You guys are cracking me up. For one thing, didn’t you know Shia’s next role was as an obese black woman with a sassy attitude? I take it Shia is not getting career advice from Keanu Reeves?

    And yeah, Joseph Gordon Levitt would be great… except would playing Y would be a bit too close to his upcoming role as Cobra Commander? I mean they are both males who have a goal and occasionally express emotions, right?

  36. For the record: I know nothing about Shia LeBeouf as a person, so I don’t know or care if he’s an utter twit or a Really Cool Guy. Rather than being the kind of superficial person who follows that kind of celebrity gossip, I’m the kind of superficial person who views actors as nothing more than performers whose role is to entertain me. Or perhaps invite me to their hotel room for a one-night stand. (mimes to Shia: “call me”)

    LaBeouf’s best work that I’ve seen was in “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints”, where he and Robert Downey both played the main character, in the past and present. I think it’s a shame that pretty much the only other major roles he’s had have been (as he puts it) “the ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation”. If what he’s seen of “Y” looks like yet another one of those roles (and I can certainly see it becoming little more than that in Hollywood’s hands), I can’t blame him for taking a pass on it. If I were him, and I didn’t want to become the typecast middle-aged subject of a “whatever happened to….” program 20 years from now, I’d be looking for fluffy romantic comedy or a somber character-based drama at this point in my career.

  38. I think it’s pretty lazy of me to not read all of the comments to see if someone made a similar joke.

  39. Hey, it was better than the cheap, low-brow, picture-referencing joke about how he got all those plum movie roles that I was going to make (thank goodnoess I didn’t!).

    (The bitch of it is, as much as I love Y: The Last Man, and as underwhelmed as Shia generally leaves me, I think the two would go together to create something…palatable. like peanut butter and white chocolate.)

    (ALSO: I hope there’s another five minutes of giant robots hiding in the backyard in the upcoming Transformers: Legends of the Fall movie.)

  44. Happy he’s not going to be Yorick.

    Approve of his reasons even if they’re a bit short-sighted.

    Impressed by his ability to give diplomatic answers when most celebs seem incapable.

    The guy who directed Disturbia (or one of those movies) was or is slated to direct the Y movie and has stated that he wanted to cast Lebeouf as Yorick.

    He’s the same in every movie, so why not make the same movie over and over again.

    I’m sure the millions he’ll make for the third Transformers movie has nothing to do with his decision to not make thousands to play Yorick.

    and finally, an actor saying they aren’t interested in a role to a member of the press is code for one of two things, 1-“they didn’t want to pay me enough” or 2-“they picked somebody else but you’ll never know that so I can say I passed on the role instead.”

    *