Y Me?

Alas! Poor Yorick. No, we haven't been overdosing on Kenneth Branagh films; we are of course referring to the lead character in the latest comic book set to hit the screen. Screenwriter Jeff Vintar, the man behind this summer's I, Robot, has signed on to adapt Brian K. Vaughan's comic book Y: The Last Man. David S Goyer, screenwriter of the Blade series and no stranger to comic book movies, will produce the film. The lead character is Yorick, the last man standing after a mystery plague kills every being on the planet with a Y-chromosone except Yorick and his pet monkey. No one knows why Yorick has survived, but everyone is determined the exploit him. While the whole thing sounds like a male fantasy, it quickly degenerates into a macho nightmare, as Amazon-types roaming the streets terrorize poor Yorick and the all female, gun-toting government threaten to remove him if he doesn't make himself useful in saving the world. Meanwhile, his girlfriend is on the other side of the world and Yorick is trying to get to her, despite the fact that the vast majority of the world's pilots and mechanics have disappeared. The film will have to tread a find line between chauvinism and feminism, but this is a sufficiently intriguing premise to work. Let's just hope that it doesn't degenerate into Planet of the Apes with less body hair.