Disturbia and Eagle Eye director D.J. Caruso has been working on getting an adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s “Y: The Last Man” off the ground for a couple of years now. Things looked good for the prospective film, despite the lack of much activity, because Caruso had a good track record at the box office and frequent collaborator Shia LaBeouf was interested in the lead role. And everyone knows, when you have a bankable star attached to a project, you can get almost anything off the ground.

Well, things might have hit a major snag now. ComingSoon.net is reporting that in the latest issue of “Wizard” magazine, LaBeouf has changed his tune. The actor contends that Yorick Brown, the protagonist of Y, is too similar to Sam Witwicky, the hero of Transformers.

“You take Sam and you put a monkey on his shoulder,” said LaBeouf of Yorick’s sidekick Ampersand. “I don’t know if it’s that big a differential. It seems like he’s the ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation again…I’m not willing to make that movie currently, and may be too old to play the role by the time it does come around.”

Y: The Last Man centers around Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand, the two lone surviving male mammals on the planet after an unexplained phenomenon (suspected to be a plague) causes everything with a Y chromosome to simultaneously drop dead. Yorick starts on a trek from Boston to Australia to find his girlfriend, touring the crumbling remains of society and odd pockets of thriving communities while eluding government agents and international mercernaries along the way. 

This was a role that I had thought LaBeouf was perfect for. Despite what he may say, LaBeouf does the “ordinary guy” role extremely well. It’s up to him how he plays the nuances of the character, but personally, I don’t see many similarities between Yorick and Sam outside of their similarly grave situations. Sam’s a lot of nervous high school hormones; Yorick has plenty of goofy moments but is ultimately a more serious and mature character. It seemed like the perfect part to convincingly transition LaBeouf from playing kids in high school to young adults (because nobody bought that Eagle Eye role, right?). The series even takes place over the course of a few years, giving LaBeouf the perfect timeframe to age comfortably into the role, since the film was being conceived as the first part of a trilogy.

If LaBeouf is indeed officially passing on the project, then it could be dead in the water for some time to come. Barring another young bankable star signing on (who else is there? Zac Efron?) in the near future, Caruso will probably have to either reshape the budget (assuming one has been drawn up already) for a scaled-back movie, or shelve the film until he can find someone to replace LaBeouf. I’m holding out hope that Caruso can talk LaBeouf back into the project, but for now, Y: The Last Man will probably have to move on without him.

Tags: Brian K. Vaughan, Carl Ellsworth, Shia LaBeouf, Y: The Last Man