Dystopian comic series Y: The Last Man is finally getting a TV adaptation. FX obtained the rights three years ago, and unlike many adaptations that languish in development hell, it’s actually happening.
Former American Gods showrunner Michael Green will take charge alongside Aida Mashaka Croal, who wrote episodes for Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. Melina Matsoukas, a director best known for music videos including Beyoncé‘s “Formation,” is onboard to direct. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the writers have been working on a script for months, and FX is ready to make a pilot episode.
Y: The Last Man earned a cult following during its 60-issue run from 2002 to 2008. Written by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Pia Guerra, it’s a dystopian sci-fi epic where every creature with a Y-chromosome—in other words, all male animals and cisgender men—simultaneously drops dead. The only survivors are an escape artist named Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand, and Yorick has no idea what singled them out.
It’s a high-concept story exploring how the world would fare after such a disaster, and how women would rebuild society. For obvious reasons, this makes it a rarity in the TV landscape: a big-budget sci-fi drama that will almost exclusively star women.
The Y: The Last Man adaptation has gone through a few iterations already, with Vaughan endorsing Michael Green as showrunner. He described Green’s vision as “really brave and very different,” tackling toxic masculinity. Green has been working on the script for a while, but his viewpoint apparently changed after the 2016 election. Speaking to THR, he said he rewrote the script into a “violent protest,” explaining that “it couldn’t not be political.” Something similar happened with Green and Bryan Fuller‘s work on American Gods, which also used a fantasy concept to explore controversial political themes.
H/T the Hollywood Reporter