DJ Caruso's Y: The Last Man In Summer 2010?

Today during our visit to Dreamworks, we got the chance to talk to Eagle Eye director D.J. Caruso with a group of select online journalists. During the discussion, the big screen adaptation of Brian K Vaughn's Y: The Last Man came up, and Caruso dropped some potentially exciting news:

"What happened is New Line is now part of Warner Bros, and Warner Bros is now really high on the project. And Carl Ellsworth will probably be handing in a script to Warner Bros/New Line [real soon]."

Caruso says that in a perfect world, the film will hit theaters in Summer 2010.

"I was talking to Shia [LaBeouf] about this yesterday when we were looping him, because he really wants to do it as well, I would like to prep this movie in October, and start shooting it by January. Warner Bros keeps saying 'We need movies for 2010' I'm like 'We're the movie!'" said Caruso. "[Shia] wants to do it, I want to do it. I think we just need to worry about him being exhausted, so I told him, if I prep it in the fall and we start in January, that's a nice big break."

Y: The Last Man is my favorite comic book series of all time. Shia would play Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand, who instantly become the last two men on Earth after  something mysterious simultaneously kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome – including embryos, fertilized eggs, and even sperm. Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men. Yorick goes on a mission to find his girlfriend Beth, who was on vacation in Australia. However, DJ says that they aren't planning "to follow that through-line [with his girlfriend Beth] out too much in the first film." Yes, I said the FIRST FILM.

"I definitely see it as a trilogy. I see the first movie ending basically where you pick up six weeks after the incident then progressing down only a five or six week journey from that point on until the end of the first movie," revealed Caruso. "It's been hard in a good way just because there is so much good stuff to choose from. And every-time you start throwing certain scenes in the screenplay, you'll see that it sort of dislodges and starts to head a different way."

"We did something earlier where we sort of separated Yorick from Ampersand for a brief moment of time when Yorrick gets very sick. Also, the 355/Yorrick relationship, we've been working on that and not getting that right. Yorrick to me is so solid. It's really like 355 and her joining with Yorrick that has been... and act three and where do you end the first movie, and where do you go from there.

Caruso claims that co-creator Brian K Vaughn is apparently "really happy" with the direction they have taken.

"I just want to fine tune it before I give it to the studio because I always think that first impression... Because to them Y: The Last Man... Now its Warner Bros. So you're reeducating a whole different group of people."

Caruso says that if the project was greenlit, it would probably be produced by Warner Bros and not "New Line" as it would probably be over the certain budget threshold that separated the two production labels.

"I'm still gonna give it to Tobey and Rick who are at New Line but I don't know the policies at all. All I know is my agent keeps going 'Oh my god, Warner Bros wants this', which is great!"