Y: The Last Man Director Dan Trachtenberg Talks About The Comic…In 2006

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Yesterday we heard that commercial and Portal fan-film helmer Dan Trachtenberg had landed the job directing the adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn’s fan-favorite comic, Y: The Last Man. Many of us have been watching this project for a long time, and apparently so has Trachtenberg. While he may not have any feature film experience, he does have a level of enthusiasm to make up for it. Below you can listen to him talk about the comic on this podcast from 2006—New Line Cinema didn’t acquire the rights to the book until 2007—and get a sense of how he talked his way into the job.

This is something that Trachtenberg is definitely psyched about, but who wouldn’t be? He’s already changed his Twitter bio to include the fact that he’s the director of Y: The Last Man, and he tweeted that he didn’t just land a job, but a “dream job.” You can’t help but be a little bit pumped for the guy. Trachtenberg also talks about his lifelong love of comics, citing titles like Garth Ennis’ Preacher for rekindling his interest in the art form.

In Y: The Last Man a mysterious disease kills off every living mammal with a Y chromosome. Every living mammal that is, except Yorrick Brown, a recently dumped slacker and amateur magician (his escapist abilities figure prominently in the plot), and his monkey, Ampersand. Don’t ask how he wound up with a monkey, it’s a long story. With every last male gone, including the vast majority of the world’s leaders, the resulting landscape is a free-for-all of groups vying for power. Some attempt to maintain the existing forms of government, while other, more radical groups, seek to create a new, female-centric power base.