Movie News: Y: The Last Man
mrfusion
Posts: 186
New Line Revives Its "Y: The Last Man" Film
(darkhorizons.com) After being seemingly left for dead, the long-in-development film adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn's acclaimed comic series "Y: The Last Man" has suddenly risen from the ashes.
Vulture reports that New Line Cinema has put the project back in action and on the fast track following a very positive response to the latest version of the script from former "Jericho" writers Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia.
In fact the studio has reportedly already begun the process of meeting with directorial candidates to hire for the project. The writing duo came onboard back in March and started afresh, chucking out the previous draft by Carl Ellsworth.
Both DJ Caruso ("Disturbia") and Louis Leterrier ("The Incredible Hulk") were previously attached as directors while Shia LaBeouf and Alicia Keys were linked to star. None of them are expected to return.
The comic follows young amateur escape artist Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand, the last two men on Earth. Something simultaneously kills every mammal on Earth possessing a Y chromosome - including embryos, fertilized eggs, and even sperm.
Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men. Yorick goes on a mission to find his girlfriend Beth, who was on vacation in Australia.
(darkhorizons.com) After being seemingly left for dead, the long-in-development film adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn's acclaimed comic series "Y: The Last Man" has suddenly risen from the ashes.
Vulture reports that New Line Cinema has put the project back in action and on the fast track following a very positive response to the latest version of the script from former "Jericho" writers Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia.
In fact the studio has reportedly already begun the process of meeting with directorial candidates to hire for the project. The writing duo came onboard back in March and started afresh, chucking out the previous draft by Carl Ellsworth.
Both DJ Caruso ("Disturbia") and Louis Leterrier ("The Incredible Hulk") were previously attached as directors while Shia LaBeouf and Alicia Keys were linked to star. None of them are expected to return.
The comic follows young amateur escape artist Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand, the last two men on Earth. Something simultaneously kills every mammal on Earth possessing a Y chromosome - including embryos, fertilized eggs, and even sperm.
Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men. Yorick goes on a mission to find his girlfriend Beth, who was on vacation in Australia.
Comments
I'll probably still see it if it comes out though.
I just can't believe after TWD that the Hollywood powers that be are fixated on movies for this property.
But think of some of locations in Y: the White House, other parts of DC, other cities around the world, as well as sets like a submarine, a space station, etc. places that those other road trip shows never had to go. Possibly expensive places.
I had a roommate on tour who watched Friends a lot, and I never saw Ross' monkey. So I am guessing the monkey was not around that much? Ampersand would need to be in almost every scene Yorick is in. Now they might establish some ways to cheat having him there, like maybe Yorick has a pet carrier more often to bring him around in (sort of like the trick they use in Game of Thrones on HBO for some certain CGI creatures that accompany one of the characters wherever she goes- they established that she has a carrier for them, so you only need to see them when they come out). But no matter what, whether Ampersand is done with real animals or with CGI, it would be expensive. Because there would have to be a lot of him.
It still seems like a story that adapts better to a film budget than a cable TV one.
are used in your favorite TV shows - and as for Ampersand, 4 words Mr. D... BJ and the Bear. :)
And I'll bet chimps are easier to train and work with than monkeys ;) (And I wouldn't be surprised if the rules and laws governing that may have changed, too, adding expense).
I hear you, @mrfusion that it is possible. But you at least agree it is pretty expensive as a prospect? Especially in cable TV terms?
I get doing it in a series of three films, though, if they go that way. As with LOTR, it is one big journey to an end point.
Like Preacher- at a panel at NYCC, Ennis said that basically the thing that killed Preacher's development (at HBO though he didn't name them by name) is that the story is blasphemous, and it turns out you can't do that. Or, more to the point, suits up the chain believe you can't do that. So they didn't let them try.
So I am not saying it is impossible, but I think there are a lot of strikes against Y as TV, from the development point of view.
And @david_d I was thinking about the location problem and I don't think it is as expensive as you think. Look at a show like quantum leap - new location every week and it ran like 5 or 6 years.
There's still the monkey problem, but I think some a mix of cgi, live animal, and creative shooting and you solve it easily. Just bec he's drawn on yorick's shoulder so much in the book doesn't mean it has to be that way on film. Though you definitely need it to work well and connect to the audience if you are going to keep the same ending.
Also want to revisit the notion that it would be too expensive to shoot as a tv series now that I've watched the first two seasons of Game of Thrones. That series has 4 or 5 distinctly different locales going at once in the series and shoots all over the world.
The notion that the locations involved make it too expensive -- I'm not so sure.
But, to be real for a minute-- yes, I will acknowledge that you could make Y:TLM if you had GOT money. Because GOT of said to be budgeted at $6M an episode. That is a huge, outlier amount of money. HBO makes the best episodic around partly because it has (and spends) so much money on what it chooses to make. When it goes big, it goes BIG.
But here is why (though *possible*, I mean, anything is possible) going as big as GOT is a very, very unlikely prospect for Y: The Last Man. We will just compare it and GOT side by side:
- GOT has a big, established fan base of men and women in the demographic sweet spot for HBO subscribers. Y: The Last Man, as excellent and beloved as it is in our circles, is still comics. And not a long-lived superhero. It is the kind of comic that you have to be into comics to likely know about. There isn't the built-in interest that GOT had going in.
- There is the unfortunate facts about how hard it can be to get men to watch a show that is almost entirely women. Now, I am not saying that belief shouldn't be regularly challenged-- it should be. Those facts stay facts when we they are allowed to dictate content. But, if you are looking at this from the point of view of someone spending their network's money to make a show, there is the question on the table of whether or not enough men (and women, for that matter- as there is a lot of evidence that women will want to watch shows with a lot of men in it) will keep coming back for a show with a single male character. And, if they follow the books, one that is not very strong, aspirational, or decisive. A young man on the young side with a lot to learn. Much more Hamlet than Don Draper or Tony Soprano. Yorick is the kind of character I love to read/watch and follow. But an other-than aspirational lead is not necessarily considered the path of least resistance when it comes to TV.
- Even GOT gets to reuse sets and locations much more often than a Y:TLM series would get to. Y:TLM, at least to follow the books, establishes places and then leaves most all of them behind. GOT has been able to make use of some locations and sets continuously since the first season. Sure, they are adding new things all the time (hence the $6M/ep spend). But the fact that it is fantasy, and doesn't need to actually resemble any real or historical location in the world, has allowed them to pretty smartly settle down in about three or four climates (in countries with generous tax incentives) and make everything they need there. It is like the LOTR movies finding or making everything in different parts of New Zealand-- they were helped by it being fantasy, so it wasn't like they ever needed to convince us that something was happening in Washington DC, Hong Kong, or Australia. Middle Earth is what they decide it to be. Ditto the locales in GOT.
So, again, I will grant that- with pockets as deep as HBO- a great looking, convincing Y:TLM series would be possible. But I think there are TV business reasons why they was not how it went.
For a lot of their off-island shots, Lost could use a city or neighborhood in Hawaii that could be generic enough to pass, and then get the right extras for it. Do a couple quick establishing shots (hey, look, we are in a city in Korea!) and then move inside to a set on a sound stage. But they didn't have to show us a besieged US Capitol building surrounded by all female biker gangs. Or what Paris looks like in the world of the post. Every location they use would need art direction, from getting rid of any evidence of electricity in most places, to distressing. Again, not impossible, but not as quick as 'here we go- this street corner looks like it could be an office in LA'.
Also, the off-island locations in Lost were usually for the B-story. They were not for the majority of scenes. The A story got to use existing locations over and over.
In Y, there would be characters moving to new places all the time. The A story is on the move, and the B stories are elsewhere, and sometimes also on the move.
I mean, it is doable, but on most TV budget it would look pretty cheap. Even Lost, as impressive as it was in faking locations, didn't usually look all THAT great when they were off-island.
And, to be fair, Lost, also, is one of the most expensive and high-budgeted shows in network history. So it is another outlier comparison, or, at least, a comparison to the type of show that gets about the most money a show can ever get. (And not an amount that network shows likely get anymore).
Now, I'm not saying that makes me right, of course, or that I could do her job. I am just speculating on these things like everyone else. But I will just throw it out there that what is or isn't expensive in TV is a conversation I have a lot. So that is part of why I find it an interesting thing to discuss, but also I feel like I do have something of an eye for these things.
Plus It is pretty hard in today's culture to use 'only appeals to comic book people' as an argument bec there is so much data showing that is a weak stance. If anything, the opposite is true.
I love Y, and have recommended and lent it out to a lot of friends, men and women, and it is one of my go-to books for people who don't read the comics for grown-ups they have heard about and want to try. I love it.
But what I am pointing out is my speculation on why a network-- the people who represent the big money to be spent-- would consider it a riskier bet than Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones had a bigger awareness. More people had read the original material than Y, and would potentially be hooked to tune in on it. So Y doesn't have the name recognition/ brand awareness going for it that GOT had. Even if everyone that read Y loved it, and comes from all sorts of demographic walks of life, it is still a relatively small group. Because it is still a comic from the last 15 years, and actually reading them is going to be in terms of subculture numbers, not pop culture numbers. And that can limit how much money a network would want to lay out to risk on it.
It has nothing to do with whether the work is actually good or not. It is a matter of how much awareness there is for the work as an existing property (at least, from the point of view that I am speculating about).
Again, I am not saying that Y as a TV show couldn't have succeeded in attracting men and women to watch a show with one man in it. It could have. But it would have bucked a lot of conventional wisdom in doing so.
And those controlling the purse strings rarely tend to take those risks. Business usually wants to go in the 'past performance suggest future returns' approach. And thus bet on convention (and end up perpetuating it).