The acclaimed comic series Y: The Last Man will be staying just that: a comic. New Line optioned rights for a film close to a decade ago, but after sitting around for so long, they recently reverted back to the series' creators — and there's no sign right now that they'll be going anywhere else. New Line had been attempting to get a film going as recently as last year, even bringing on commercial director Dan Trachtenberg to see it through, but Trachtenberg revealed on Twitter last week that the film is done for.

"An adventure movie with swashbuckle that was fun and funny"

While fans of the series may never get to see the comic up on screen, Trachtenberg spoke with SlashFilm about what the movie would have been like if he'd gotten to make it. "I was excited to make an adventure movie with swashbuckle that was fun and funny but had something to say," he says, noting that it would have stayed close to series creator Brian K. Vaughan's style. "Having real, true, honest people stuff amidst the big, fun, action stuff. We were in many ways quite faithful to the comic, though some characters were combined and some events rearranged and some brief moments of action we dug into to create bigger action / adventure sequences."

Trachtenberg hoped to turn the series into a Star Wars-style serial. His film would have covered only the comic's first two trades, leaving room for sequels to finish out the story. There's reason to believe Trachtenberg wouldn't have let fans down either: though he's yet to complete a feature film, he previously saw huge, viral success with a short based on Portal (and he now has a film lined up with J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot). Unfortunately for fans, now that it's out of his hands, that could be it for the movie. "I’m not sure Brian [K. Vaughan] will ever want to do anything more with it," he tells SlashFilm, "and I’m not sure that he needs to."