Dan Trachtenberg pulled in 11.5 million views with his moody seven-minute fan film Portal: No Escape (above), based on the popular puzzle platforming game by Valve, a project that has springboarded the new director to much bigger things: He's now been tapped by New Line Cinema to direct the long-gestating movie adaptation of graphic novel Y: The Last Man for his first feature film.

The long-running Vertigo comic book series by brainy sci-fi writer Brian K. Vaughan pictures a future in which a plague kills nearly all males. Escape artist Yorick Brown and his monkey Ampersand survive as the only creatures left with Y chromosomes, forced to navigate their way through post-apocalyptic gender politics.

Trachtenberg, who previously co-hosted the geek podcast The Totally Rad Show, has long been obsessing over Y, as he explains in the podcast chat embedded below.

Casting details have yet to emerge on the project, but there's solid reason to be psyched about the big-screen Y. Trachtenberg's moody take on Portal milked maximum suspense from a minimalist scenario centered on a tough female prisoner who busts out of captivity with the help of a wormhole-blasting machine gun. Factor in Vaughn's storytelling chops, which earned him a three-season stint as a writer-producer for Lost and more recently stunned sci-fi fans with thoughtful 2012 graphic novel Saga.

If Trachtenberg ropes in great designers and some decent actors, we could be looking at a Hollywood movie that hits the bulls-eye for every last man – and woman – on earth.