Corona | Coming Attractions

A new director has been found for New Line's long gestating Y: The Last Man movie, and it's Dan Trachtenberg. The creator of the Portal short fan film that gathered much online attention when it was released last year, Trachtenberg has a background in directing commercials. Likely his Portal short caught the eye of New Line and the movie's producers, and may have been instrumental in cementing his geek friendliness to the original comic book source material.

The present script for the Y movie is by Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia. David Goyer and the Benderspink production company remain involved as the film's producers. No actors are presently attached to the project.

A report indicates that New Line Cinema might have finally settled on a screenplay for the proposed Y movie that they like.

The online showbiz site Vulture is the one with the news. The site states that the studio is happy with the script that Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia have written, and are now actively looking for a director to attach to the project.

Before, director D.J. Caruso had been attached to the feature film, only to never get the momentum needed to push the project into a greenlight status.

Vulture doesn't elaborate as to what qualities of Federman and Scaia's screenplay sold New Line executives, or how much of the 60-issue comic book series is covered in their version of the story.

TV writers Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia are close to signing a contract to write a new screenplay for New Line's proposed Y: The Last Man movie. That would be the first news about the sci-fi/apocalyptic drama in a while.

Federman and Scaia have written episodes for a number of TV shows including one for ABC's short-lived Charlie's Angels reboot, Warehouse 13, Human Target and Jericho. They were also hired a couple of months ago by Sony Pictures to write the screenplay for a new Zorro movie.

Clash of the Titans remake helmer Louis Leterrier has revealed that he wants to make Y: The Last Man as either a trilogy of movies or a TV series. "I'm surprised that it hasn't gotten made yet," Leterrier told MTV. "The first time I read it, I was in France and doing my little movies, and I didn't think I would ever have access to these kinds of movies. Midway through Clash of the Titans, I was like, 'What's going on with Y The Last Man?' I called one of the producers and asked what was going on, and he said it was available. I said, 'Let's go!'"

So if Leterrier wants to do it, what's the hold up in getting the ball rolling? "It's kind of stuck somewhere now," he answered. "I still want to do it. I'm passionate about it. But it's stuck. People don't know what to do with it. I'd love to do it, but I need people to finance it, and the people financing it don't know if it's a TV show a movie, or what it should be."

Leterrier has ideas for either direction the project takes as it heads toward a live-action adaptation. "It could play as a movie, but it would be very interesting as a TV show," he said. "[It wouldn't work as] one large film, no. I'd love to do it as a TV show or a three-part series."

And then the MTV reporter asked him to explain his idea of a Y TV show. "I like the idea of a TV show. You take time to get to know your characters. You can introduce a lot of characters. You don't need your three-action set pieces that you usually need for movies. Frankly, with HBO and Showtime and cable shows, the DVD box sets and all, you can have a product that doesn't make you feel like as soon as it's projected, it's thrown away. It's really a piece of art."

While this project has been stuck in creative limbo for close to eight years now, there is a report that director Louis Leterrier is interested in attaching himself to Y. Leterrier's name was just mentioned last week as one of the possible filmmakers being considered to direct Marvel's Avengers movie. His next film is Warner Bros. Clash of the Titans remake, and keeping Leterrier within the WB family could be a possible strategic move.

As we first reported last week, Variety has confirmed our exclusive story about screenwriter Jeff Vintar being hired to adapt the DC/Vertigo comic book Y: The Last Man as a feature film for New Line Cinema. Vintar will follow his work on Y by adapting Isaac Asimov's Foundation novel as two separate screenplays for 20th Century Fox, to be possibly directed by Shekhar Kapur.

The Foundation screenplays will base their source material on three of Asimov's novels, Foundation, Foundation and Earth and Second Foundation. As our source told us, Vintar's two scripts will be titled Foundation and Second Foundation.

This tidbit of Hollywood insider news comes from a longtime and frequent contributor to Coming Attractions who's always been privy to development news before it hits the trades. Our pal returned to fill us in on an exciting new development taking place with the long-in-development movie version of Isaac Asimov's Foundation novel. It looks like fans who have been waiting years to see Asimov's future world unfold on the big screen might have finally gotten a break...

Our source spills the news that Twentieth Century Fox has just hired a screenwriter to adapt Asimov's Foundation as one long script, with the most likely decision to split the screenplay into two separate movies, tentatively proposed as being Foundation and Second Foundation. The writer that got the job is Jeff Vintar who's latest work just happens to be I, Robot, another Asimov story currently being turned into a movie starring Will Smith.

For those unfamiliar with the premise of Foundation, the book series is considered to be one of the epic tales spun by one of the grandmasters of science fiction rivaling Frank Herbert's Dune series. Foundation is the story of Hari Seldon, a future scholar who invents a new branch of predictive analysis called "psycho-history". Seldon's psycho-history is a mathematical science that can predict the future actions of large numbers of people, and as such he is able to predict that the current galactic government will fall into chaos and disrepair in a few short centuries. Absolutely certain that civilization will dissolve, Seldon sets about to create a grand plan to preserve the knowledge and technology of humanity. Unfortunately Seldon's attempt at salvation is thrown into jeopardy by the appearance of The Mule, a deformed mutant who intends to take over the galaxy and who cannot possibly have been foreseen by Seldon or psycho-history. Can Seldon still manage to ensure humanity will have a future?

Our source tells us that the powers that be at Fox want Vintar's Foundation scripts to be "a very faithful adaptation of one of the great classics of sci-fi." We're also told that Elizabeth and The Four Feathers director Shekhar Kapur, who was at one time attached to the project, still remains interested in making the film. The producer of Foundation is Vince Gerardis; Gerardis is also involved in the screen adaptation of Greg Bear's apocalyptic sci-fi thriller The Forge of God.

However, there's a prior commitment that Vintar must first complete before starting to write the two Foundation scripts for Fox, and that's also an exclusive scoop: the writer has been tapped to adapt the Vertigo comic book Y: The Last Man for New Line Cinema. David Goyer, the screenwriter of all three Blade films as well as director on the now-filming Blade: Trinity, is a producer on the Y movie.

And now you know.

Following up on our exclusive report that New Line Cinema is developing a movie based on the Vertigo/DC Comics comic book Y: The Last Man, a source relays to us the latest developments on this project.

According to our inside source, New Line Cinema executive Cale Boyter will definitely serve as one of Y's producers, with fellow New Line exec Richard Brenner and president of production Toby Emmerich possibly also receiving a producer's credit. Boyter, Brenner and Emmerich would join previously announced producers David Goyer, J.C. Spink and Chris Bender on the project, unless one of the aforementioned trio have exited the nascent film.

Our source also tells us that the search for a screenwriter to adapt the comic is fully underway. So far no leading candidates have emerged.

Y: The Last Man has just published its twelfth issue. The series postulates the aftermath of a mysterious global disaster that kills every male mammal, sperm and zygote but leaves one man and his pet monkey alive. As the lone survivor searches for his missing fiancee, powerful and dangerous factions pursue Yorick Brown each with their own agenda for acquiring or killing the last man on Earth. The series was created by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra.

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed our story from last week that the Vertigo comic book Y: The Last Man has been optioned by New Line Cinema. The involvement of Blade screenwriter David Goyer and his Phantom Four company as well as producers Chris Bender and J.C. Spink via their Benderspink outlet is also mentioned, with Mason Novick also along for the ride.

Coming Attractions has learned that the hit science fiction comic book series Y: The Last Man has been optioned by New Line Cinema as a feature film. Created by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra, this ongoing series debuted last summer from Vertigo/DC Comics and immediately became one of the most talked about and critically praised books in the comics industry today.

Y: The Last Man is the story of Yorick Brown, a twentysomething amateur escape artist who appears to be the sole human male survivor of a mysterious plague that instantly killed every other male mammal with a Y chromosome on the planet. Even more enigmatic is that a male monkey named Ampersand, whom Yorick was in the process of training for disabled people, also survived the plaque unscathed. As the world's nations struggle to bury the billions left dead and rebuild society, powerful and dangerous groups learn of Yorick and Ampersand's existence and seek to capture the last two males on the planet -- or finish the job that the plaque started.

The WHOIS registery lists the owners of Internet domain names. It's through this online resource that we discovered the domain names www.ythelastman.com and www.ythelastmanmovie.com were registered by a representative of New Line Cinema on March 4 of this year.

Furthermore, the 4Filmmakers website, a film industry resource website, posted a new listing for a Y movie only yesterday. Listed as producers on the Y film are J.C. Spink and Chris Bender, Mason Novick and David Goyer. New Line Cinema is listed as the studio where the project is set up. Production companies working on the movie are Benderspink (the Hollywood development firm owned by Spink and Bender) and Phantom Four Films, Goyer's own production company.

Goyer, if you may recall, is the screenwriter of the two Blade films as well as The Crow: City of Angels. He is rumored to be writing the latest draft of Batman 5 for Memento director Chris Nolan. Last year Goyer made his directorial debut with Zigzag and is attached to direct the DreamWorks picture The Descent as well as New Line's Darksiders. He is also an accomplished comic book writer himself, currently penning the DC Comics series JSA.

To date no official announcement from New Line Cinema has been made, but here's some free advice to any of Hollywood's leading men looking for work: if you've ever wanted to be the last man on Earth, you need to get your agent on the phone right now and have them call New Line today. There may be a monkey in your future.