Two months after Y, the television adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man, was given a series order by FX, showrunners Michael Green and Aïda Mashaka Croal have announced that they will not be moving forward with the series. The series will remain at FX, with the network beginning the search for a new showrunner.
Last night, Croal (Luke Cage) and Green (American Gods, Blade Runner 2049) released a statement over Twitter thanking their cast and crew for their hard work and expressing their sadness that the series “in its current form” would not be moving forward:
@andmichaelgreen pic.twitter.com/igNnghiatM
— Aida Croal (@mashaka74) April 15, 2019
The wording of the statement made it sound as if FX might have reversed the series order. However, Entertainment Weekly confirmed with the network that it was the showrunners who were exiting the project, “due to creative differences with the network.”
When the series order was picked up, Green and Croal’s statement gave a sense of how they had intended to adapt the source material: “Brian and Pia’s exploration of a world without men is a favorite for its depth, its humor, its insights and its monkey. Adapted today it offers us a cracked mirror to look at our own very cracked world. We thank them for their trust—we thank FX for their support—and we thank the casting gods for letting us work with this incredible group of actors.” Variety’s report also pointed to a quote from FX president John Landgraf at the recent Television Critics Association winter tour, about the series: “If you want to get things right, if you want to take care with them, you have to stop; you have to slow down. Sometimes you have to shut down for a period of time. You know, you have to come back to the original material… but it’s just not an easy adaptation, and it’s just taken us a long time to get it right.”
It is unclear if Vaughan will continue to serve as an executive producer, as was announced in February.
Running from 2002-2007, the Vertigo Comics series followed Yorick Brown, the last surviving cisgender man on Earth following a plague that wipes out every organism with a Y chromosome (aside from his monkey buddy Ampersand), and the surviving women chasing him down for a dozen different reasons related to the survival of the human race. The adaptation stars Barry Keoghan, Lashana Lynch, Imogen Poots, Diane Lane, Marin Ireland, Julianna Canfield, and Amber Tamblyn. Y is expected to debut sometime in 2020.
