For genre fans, Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s comic Y: The Last Man is up there with The Sandman and Locke And Key in terms of “we’ll believe in a film/TV adaptation when we’re watching the end credits.” However, although FX hasn’t gone ahead and greenlit the series, it has taken a big step forward.
THR reports that FX has given an official pilot order to the show, which had already recruited American Gods co-creator and incredibly busy screenwriter Michael Green (Logan, Murder On The Orient Express, Blade Runner 2049, Alien: Covenant). Green will serve as co-showrunner along with Aida Mashaka Croal (Jessica Jones, Turn). Melina Matsoukas (Insecure, Master Of None, Beyonce: Formation) will direct the pilot.
The comic, which ran from 2002-2008, “revolves around Yorick Brown — the last surviving human with a Y chromosome — and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand. The series follows escape artist Yorick after a mysterious plague as he sets out to find what might have wiped out the male chromosome.” Together with Agent 355, they set out to find geneticist Dr Allison Mann in the hopes that she has the answers.
Both Vaughan and Green have spoken about how the current political climate will play into the story, with the latter telling THR in November that “It would have been a very different show, and very different development process, had the election not been as horrifying as it was. I had to put the script down for a couple months and really reassess it tonally, because it became a different creature, it became violent protest. It couldn’t not be political, and I had to embrace it, and I had to find my way in, and I had to find a way to channel my own dismay, disappointment and rage into it, while still keeping it what it is. For a minute there, I almost walked away.”
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