For the better part of a decade, a big screen adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn’s seminal comic series ‘Y: The Last Man‘ has been on again and off again in so many different forms. When ‘Disturbia’ director DJ Caruso left the project in 2012, Louis Leterrier of ‘The Incredible Hulk’ tried to turn it into a television series. When neither version panned out, New Line Cinema tried again in 2012 with writers Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia. In 2013, the studio hired Dan Trachenberg as the new director and tried to get the ball rolling before the rights reverted to the creators. Well, it looks like they couldn’t pull the trigger fast enough because that is exactly what happened.

According to /Film, the film based on the first two trades of ‘Y: The Last Man’ is now officially dead and the rights have reverted back to Vaughn and Pia Guerra. In an interview with the site, Trachenberg shed some light on why the project never got off the ground:

“The rights reverted back to Brian quite a few months ago. I had such a great time working on that project and am truly sad the things we were cooking up can no longer happen. Like everyone else who’s a fan of the series I had always wished it either remain in its comic book form. Or, if it must be made, a TV series would be the only thing that would suffice.

However, the ‘big screen’ and the ‘small screen’ has changed drastically since Y came out and I think so much of the great TV in our current “golden age” has been directly or indirectly inspired by ‘Y: The Last Man’. I started getting excited about bringing to the BIG screen what we’ve been getting in TV so readily now— great characters, RELATIONSHIPS, world building and genre re-combination.”

The filmmaker went on to say that he’s disappointed that things couldn’t work out for his version of the story, but Trachenberg stated that he feels that the rights are back where they belong. However, he’s not sure that they’ll leave again:

“I’m not sure Brian will ever want to do anything more with it and I’m not sure that he needs to. His latest comics ‘Saga’ and ‘The Private Eye’ are great and we should be reading them. His ‘never-been-made’ screenplays are some of my favorite reads ever (Roundtable, specifically).  I hope we can convince him to write us some more awesome original movies and TV— but I think comics is where his heart lies.

Alas…we will always have that thing we fell in love with— that’s not going anywhere…”

As Trachenberg said, ‘Y: The Last Man’ would probably work better as a TV show. Hopefully the success of ‘The Walking Dead’ and the upcoming ‘Preacher’ pilot will persuade a network to pick the story up. That is, of course, if that’s what the creators want. But what do the fans say? Would you want to see the comic series as a television show? Do you think that Vaughn and Guerra should license the rights again? Share your thoughts in the comments below.