Caruso Still "Loosely Attached" To Y: The Last Man Film

In a small news story we missed last week, director D.J. Caruso (Disturbia, Eagle Eye) gave Splashpage an update on the long-in-development film adaptation of Y: The Last Man.

The movie, based on the excellent graphic novel by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, has been churning around in Hollywood for two or three years now, famously with Shia LaBeouf attached as the lead role of Yorick Brown. In the story, Yorick becomes the last man on Earth when a plague wipes out all of the males on the planet except Yorick and his pet monkey, Ampersand. He treks across the world in search of his girlfriend Beth, to whom he was proposing on the phone when the plague/event/mystery cause struck.

It's been a while since any new information has risen about the project, but Caruso had some interesting things to say in Splashpage's recent interview:

I'm still in active development at New Line. I'm still kind of loosely attached. We've taken about four cracks at the screenplay...it's been a really tough one, only because there's so much that you cover and trying to narrow it down [is a problem]...

My problem that I have with New Line [is], they're good people, but I felt you had to make this film as a trilogy. [I felt] that you really had to deal with books one through four on their own. And I think there was a different philosophy there. They really wanted to cover a lot more ground [in one film], which I didn't think would make for a great movie. I thought you'd be cramming too much into one movie. So that's where we left off...Maybe when I get back [from shooting I Am Number Four] we'll try to get back into it. I really do love that project, so I hope we can make something work out. That's been the problem. I think we've all felt the same frustration about it.

 Being a fan of both the graphic novel series and LaBeouf as an actor, I was one of the vocal supporters of this incarnation of the movie. Unfortunately, it looks like LaBeouf has moved on and doesn't want to pigeonhole himself as an actor by playing characters that are too similar - which I totally understand. I get it. It's just a shame that version never came to be, because he would have been perfect for the character.

That said, I'm glad Caruso is still interested in the project. I think he's put enough time and effort in that he doesn't want to count that as wasted time, and with as much as he respects the source material (a quality that can't be overlooked) I think he'll bring an interesting take on the story. Hopefully Y: The Last Man will come together sometime soon.

What do you think? Are you still excited for this project, or are you totally over it?