It was only this past April that FX’s long-gestating adaptation of Y: The Last Man was rumoured to have been canned, but now we thankfully have news to say the series has brought in a new showrunner.
Those April reports suggested that there were some significant problems with the small-screen take on Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s beloved Y: The Last Man. Titled Y, depending on what you believe, the series was either completely cancelled or was undergoing some major creative changes. Well, it looks as if it is indeed the latter of those two scenarios.
As first reported by Deadline, FX has signed up Extant and Animal Kingdom’s Eliza Clark as Y’s new executive producer and showrunner.
On this news, Clark enthused, “A decade ago I devoured the complete Y: The Last Man series cover to cover, imagining how it might take shape on screen. It introduced me to the amazing work of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra and the complex, fascinating world of Y. I’m thrilled to tell this story and to be working with this immensely talented cast.”
Previously, Aida Mashaki Croal and Michael Green were in place as showrunners before departing the project earlier this year. According to Y executive producer Nina Jacobsen, Eliza Clark was somebody they’d long been interested in bringing in to work on Y in a writing capacity.
The last we’d heard, regardless of these creative changes, the current plan is to move forward with the same cast that have already shot a pilot episode for Y. On board for that pilot were Barry Keoghan, Diane Lane, Amber Tamblyn, Imogen Poots, Juliana Canfield, Lashana Lynch and Marin Ireland.
The early blurb on the show reads:
All of the men are dead. But one. Based on the DC comic book series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, Y traverses a world of women – exploring gender, race, class and survival.
For those not familiar with Y: The Last Man, the 60-issue comic book series ran from 2002 to 2008 and focussed on Yorick Brown, the titular “last man”. When the world suffers a tragic event that kills off every creature with a Y chromosome, Yorick only has his monkey, Ampersand, for company until he finds himself teaming up with a government operative to make sense of what’s happened and why he’s somehow managed to stay alive.
Previously, several attempts have been made to get an adaptation of the property off the ground, most notably with ultimately-doomed live-action movies in 2007 and 2013.
As ever, expect more on the future of Y as we get it.
