FX has officially ordered the long-gestating Y: The Last Man adaptation to series. The news was announced at Monday’s Television Critics Association press tour.
Diane Lane, Barry Keoghan, Imogen Poots, Lashana Lynch, Amber Tamblyn, Juliana Canfield and Marin Ireland will star. Lynch’s character is Agent 355.
Here’s FX’s description: “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.”
Michael Green (American Gods, Blade Runner 2049, Logan) and Aïda Mashaka Croal (Luke Cage, Turn) will serve as co-showrunners and will executive produce along with Melina Matsoukas (Insecure, Master of None), Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson of Color Force (American Crime Story, Pose, The Hunger Games) and Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Marvel’s Runaways, Saga), who have been working together to develop the series.
“Y: The Last Man is a towering achievement among graphic novel storytelling and it’s been rewarding to work with this outstanding team,” said Grad. “Michael Green and Aïda Mashaka Croal have partnered with Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson to deliver a stunning new expression of this fascinating and timely story. Melina Matsoukas, who directed the pilot, did an incredible job bringing it to life with Diane Lane and this stellar cast.”
“Brian and Pia’s exploration of a world without men is a favorite for its depth, its humor, its insights and its monkey,” said Croal and Green. “Adapted today it offers us a cracked mirror to look at our own very cracked world. We thank them for their trust — we thank FX for their support — and we thank the casting gods for letting us work with this incredible group of actors.”
Jacobson and Simpson added, “Y is our favorite comic book series ever and we are thrilled to FINALLY bring it to the screen. We are grateful that Brian entrusted it to us and FX, and can’t wait for the world to see Michael and Aïda’s adaptation.”
In the Y: The Last Man, comic book series, Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, and his monkey, Ampersand, suddenly become the last two male beings on earth after something mysterious wipes out every mammal on the planet 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 is supposed to be on vacation in Australia and is accompanied by a bodyguard named Agent 355. She is an employee of a secretive U.S. government agency, described in brief as a bad-ass who kicks butt and confidently handles a variety of weapons. Though the central character is a white man, Agent 355, a significant role, is a black woman. Keoghan will be Yorick, and Lynch will be Agent 355.
Y: The Last Man is a 60-issue sci-fi comic book series published beginning in 2002. It received three Eisner Awards and won the first Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story for Y: The Last Man, Volume 10.
For some more context, this is a project that has been in the works since at least 2008, and it was at once a priority for New Line Cinema. Later, Vaughan said the project was dead.
In 2016, FX announced that a project was in development there from Green.
Way back in 2008, Alicia Keys was the then producer’s choice to play Agent 355, but he also mentioned Zoe Saldana, adding that, by the time the film was to be released, “Star Trek will be out, and she’ll be huge,” obviously hoping to capitalize on any added popularity Saldana was expected to gain after Star Trek‘s release. And while Star Trek was released, and was relatively huge for Saldana, no Y: The Last Man film adaptation ever materialized. Rosario Dawson was another name that was mentioned at that time.
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