The highly anticipated Y: The Last Man series was officially announced with new logo and photo during Disney’s Investor Day last week, cementing the popular comic book series into Hulu’s catalog as soon as 2021.
Y: The Last Man is a post-apocalyptic comic book series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra that ran from 2002 to 2006 through Vertigo. The premise centers around Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand who are believed to be the last remaining male mammals on Earth. The two are hunted for research and spend the whole 60-issue series escaping danger while trying to discover why their lives were spared.
Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra have seen the pilot for #YTheLastMan 😱 pic.twitter.com/KmfCG41nN7
— Y: The Last Man Stan (@YTheLastStan) December 12, 2020
A film adaptation was originally planned back in 2007 by New Line Cinema, but conflicts surrounding the complexity of the plot for a 2-hour movie led screenwriters and directors to drag their feet until 2014 when Vaughan and Guerra regained rights.
In 2015, Vaughan confirmed that a TV series adaptation for FX was “chugging along,” and in 2018, a cast list was announced to include Diane Lane, Imogen Poots, and Lashana Lynch. A few more shuffles of the cast and crew continued, and the lead character of Yorick was finalized in February of this year as Ben Schnetzer.
As an interesting side note, last year, the role of Ampersand the monkey was originally pegged to be Katie, the same Capuchin monkey who played Marcel in the hit 90s TV show Friends, but PETA has announced in October that Ampersand will be created with CGI instead.
This is the story I laughed the hardest while “reporting”: Marcel, the capuchin monkey from #Friends is alive and well — and filmed the pilot for FX’s #YTheLastMan https://t.co/hroV5I2RXz pic.twitter.com/jW6VK19d8I
— Lesley Goldberg (@Snoodit) August 17, 2019
VICTORY! Following years of pressure from PETA, @FXNetworks‘ upcoming show for @Hulu #YTheLastMan will exclusively use CGI to portray the monkey character!
While it reportedly previously used a real monkey, the show’s decision is the only compassionate way to continue filming. pic.twitter.com/iKvgLd74oz
— PETA (@peta) October 26, 2020
While Disney has yet to confirm the speculated 2021 release window, we’re anticipating an end-of-2021 release based on a few hints around social media.
Once again for those asking, I’m going to be in Canada for half a year shooting this delicious, ferocious thing: #YTheLastMan pic.twitter.com/qlzOrQE00h
— Amber Tamblyn (@ambertamblyn) December 17, 2020
We’ll certainly keep you updated as we learn more!
