Is a Y: THE LAST MAN movie on again after years of on and off again? Sounds like it. According to Claude Brodesser-Akner, New Line is all ginned up by a new draft for a Y movie by Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia (Jericho) and everyone has fanned out to search for a director.
Based on the Brian K. Vaughan/Pia Guerra comic about a world where every man has been killed but one, Y: THE LAST MAN has been pursued by many over the years, most recently DISTURBIA director DJ Caruso. Comic nerd Shia LaBeouf was once rumored for the role of Yorick Brown, as was Zachary Levi. Director Louis Leterrier was also once interested in Y, but as a TV series.
Has Y: THE LAST MAN become the new WATCHMEN, a fabled but inflammable favorite? Well, ya know, here’s what *I* think (I was the acquiring editor of the comic back in the long ago). I always thought Y worked for many of the same reasons as The Walking Dead: soap opera and adventure in a post-apocalyptic world where just getting some mustard for your hot dog is a struggle. (And of course both are incredibly well done.) Many (myself included) think Y would be a better TV miniseries than single movie, and in a world where The Walking Dead rules and post-apocalyptic survival shows are a staple of every fall schedule (Revolution), even an ongoing series would seem a no-brainer…except for the all-but-one female cast. That could be a hard sell to a network exec. It works for a single movie, but then the story would lose so much impact. Thus…unfilmable. but New Line is sticking with it.
As far as other BKV projects go, despite his insistence that his current hit Saga is also unfilmable due to the costly spacefaring visuals and dark tone, in an interview this week with Paste Magazine, Vaughan reveals the doorbell hasn’t stopped ringing:
I get phone calls about it all the time, but Fiona and I aren’t rushing into anything. It’s been great to do a book for Image, and when you really own a book outright, you can make a healthy living just doing comics. And I don’t think Fiona and I want to option the book just to option it. We don’t need to, but we’re open. If someone came in with a crazy notion, like here’s how to make it work as the most expensive TV show of all time or as a crazy R-rated summer movie, I think it’s unlikely, but it happens. We’d be open, but right now, no. We wanted to do something that was just meant to be a comic, so it’s all comics all the time.
In an alternate universe, Watchmen was turned into a 12-part miniseries and broadcast as part of PBS’ Mystery series. Each episode had eighty-five minutes of content: the main storyline, then ancillary material produced to look like other PBS programs (Under The Hood used techniques from Ken Burns, Nature featured an episode written by Dan Dreiberg, Frontline focused on Dr. Manhattan diplomacy and deterrence…)
It is frequently re-broadcast during fund-drives.
There’s also a copy of “The Cowboy Wally Show” floating around out there. Starring the Oscar-winning actor (for Confederacy of Dunces) Chris Farley, it won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Kyle Baker.
(Of course, it doesn’t compare to Harlan Ellison winning the Oscar for penning “I, Robot”, produced by James Cameron. A speech for the ages!)
Based on some recent experiments, it seems likely that all of my comics are inflammable favorites.
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