Shia LeBeouf is still rumored to be attached to the Y The Last Man movie adaption that Benderspink is producing — or at least there's a dialog about him being attached to it in some big wig Hollywood office. Who else could be in Y? The producer, JC Spink, told UGO that he was interested in either Zoe Saldana or Alicia Keys for the role of Yorick's bodyguard, Agent 355. But for Dr. Mann, he doesn't want Lucy Liu, he wants an unknown.

I don't know what I'm more excited for over at Benderspink: Vampire Zombies, Zombies Of Mass Destruction or Y: The Last Man. Well, okay, maybe Y.

[Hollywood Reporter]

Batman: The Dark Knight

Harvey Dent is only Two-Face for "a couple of minutes" towards the very end of The Dark Knight, the sequel to Batman Begins. The transformation into Two-Face at the movie's end sets up a confrontation in the third movie, making the Nolan Bat-films seem even more like a trilogy. (And Knight a bit more Empire Strikes Back-ish.) Mind you, this whole spoiler is based on what some reps told a guy at a costume show, where there was no Two-Face costume on display. [Superhero Hype]

Y: The Last Man (the movie)

As we'd previously reported, the Y: The Last Man movie only covers the first 12 issues of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's comic, unlike Vaughan's own movie script which tried to cover the entire saga. D.J. Caruso's Y movie would be the first of a planned trilogy, says Caruso. Also, Caruso will use a real monkey for Ampersand, and Shia LaBoeuf is definitely the front-runner to play Yorick. [Ain't It Cool]

Land Of The Lost:

Here's a first look at Will Ferrell as a park ranger who explores a hidden land and meets dinosaurs, Sleestaks and other weird creatures, in the new Land of the Lost movie. He's kind of a slob, since apparently this scene ends with him tossing his cigarette butt and cheetos bag in the lake. [JFX Online]

The reason Ferrell's scientist character is working as a park ranger (at the LaBrea Tar Pits) is because he assaulted disabled physics great Steven Hawking during an interview on Anderson Cooper 360. A young scientist, played by Anna Friel, approaches Ferrell at the Tar Pits and asks him to guide her (and his kids, for some reason) to the Land of the Lost. Are you excited yet? At least Anna Friel is fun to watch. [Slashfilm]

Doctor Who:

Here are some new Doctor Who season four teasers that have been airing on British TV. They're really only spoilery if you didn't know the Daleks were coming back:

Smallville

The person who dies in the April 17 Smallville has never been presumed dead by the audience... which means he/she may have been presumed dead by the characters on the show, as long as we knew better. [Ask Ausiello]

Also, that April 17 episode, "Descent," is when Lex Luthor jumps off the good/evil fence once and for all, and goes totally evil. He falls into his "own personal hell," says executive producer Brian Peterson. "There is a major turn that happens in his life that drives him into pure darkness. ... It's Lex's real descent into the villain he becomes." [Sci Fi Wire]

Lost

There actually will be a Jack-centric Lost episode this spring, despite reports to the contrary. [Ask Ausiello again]

Secret Invasion

More spoilers for Secret Invasion, Marvel Comics' upcoming "everyone is a shape-changing Skrull invader" storyline: Supposedly Jarvis, the Avengers' man-servant, is a Skrull, who uploads an alien virus that makes all of Tony Stark's technology crash, including Iron Man's armor. A Skrull briefly impersonates Invisible Girl, just long enough to send the Fantastic Four into the Negative Zone. A Skrull Hank Pym shoots Reed Richards, and a Skrull Captain Marvel blows open Thunderbolts Mountain. Also, a Skrull busts all the supervillains out of their supervillain prison, the Raft. Meanwhile, one of the X-Men, Nightcrawler, is a Skrull, and the X-men are the only ones on the West Coast standing in the massive Skrull Armada.

Secret Invasion #1 begins with a Skrull ship crash-landing in the Savage Land, Marvel's version of the Land of the Lost. Both the New Avengers and the Mighty Avengers rush to the crash site. The ship opens up, and the classic 1970s versions of the Marvel characters come out, including webbed-armpits Spider-Man, nose-armor Iron Man, tiara-wearing Power Man, the furry Beast, Sue Storm, Mockingbird, Wonder-Man, Captain America, evil Emma Frost and old-school Wolverine. "The modern, darker, dirty versions of all the characters stare at their more innocent version of themselves in shock." But it turns out the 1970s versions aren't the real characters returned, but a Skrull trick meant to sow doubt. Or something. Only Mockingbird turns out to be real. [Schwapp!!!]

The heartening news we should probably take away from this is that the director wants to turn it into a trilogy after centering the first movie on the first 12 issues of the series:

I see it as a trilogy because there is so much to put in. Where the first movie ends doesn't even relate to the last issue because it's so far down the road. It hasn't succeeded so far in the screenplay format because everyone keeps trying to throw everything in there. We're only taking this [first] story so far.

I just watched Disturbia for the first time this weekend, and I will grudgingly admit that Shia isn't bad in it. However, the ending of that movie was so sickeningly cotton-candy sweet after featuring actors swimming in sewage pools full of rotting corpses, that our main worry is that D.J. Caruso will completely miss the mark on Y. What do you think?

D.J. Caruso Says Shia's Still His 'Last Man' For 'Y' [MTV Movies Blog]

When you were young, did any particular science fiction inspire you to get into writing?

I'm sort of embarrassed to say... well, I'll just lay all my cards on the table here: Isaac Asimov's stuff. Isaac Asimov's science fiction stuff which was, in retrospect, is juvenile and clunky and has much better ideas than style. But, I didn't care about style then I was 12 years old. The cleverness of the mysteries, they don't hold up very well for me as an adult, but as a kid that's the stuff that sparked my imagination.

Do you have a favorite science fiction book of a film?

I honestly think that, even though this is fairly recent, The Matrix was the greatest science fiction movie I've ever seen, and I've seen them all.

Did you like all three?

The other two made my head hurt. I went in cold not knowing anything, completely cold, and it just blew my mind. Going back, I'm a big fan of Phillip K. Dick. Always have been. I'm a big fan of Alfred Bester, and I know a lot of his stuff is out of print now, which kills me. Those formative guys from the 50s and 60s, and any of those guys that Harlan assembled for Dangerous Visions, J.G. Ballard... all those guys are just phenomenal.

And Alfred Bester wrote for comics too, right? Didn't he write Green Lantern?

That's right, he wrote Green Lantern for awhile. He did some pulp stuff before the comics, but he didn't really become big until the 40s and 50s during his run in comics.

What are you writing these days?

I'm currently writing The Brave and the Bold at DC Comics, where I just finished up a run on The Flash. I'm also doing a lot of work at Boom! Studios where I'm the editor in chief.

That's right, and they're based out here in Los Angeles. What titles have you worked on there?

I wrote a miniseries called Potter's Field which came out last year, and I'm working on some more creator-owned stuff for them next year. In the meantime, that's my night job. My day job is the full-time editorial gig. I started there in July of last year, and I couldn't be happier. It's after 20 years of writing, it's cool to flex different muscles editorially because I'm finding that while I'm teaching new writers to do their stuff, it's forcing me to flex muscles that I hadn't used for awhile. Or to sort of articulate things in a way that I only know instinctively.

So were you a fan of Y: The Last Man?

Absolutely! I've been reading Y since the beginning, ever since Brian was a little kid with a stick and a hoop and a crown hat coming by my house going, "Mr. Waid! Mr. Waid! I want to grow up to be just like you!' No, I've known Brian for 10 years or better, and I've been reading his stuff all along. I couldn't be happier for him.

So you follow his work on Lost?

Definitely, and although I know it's a big room with a big group of writers, I can sometimes see flashes of Brian every now and again with the humor.

Do you think anyone could do a good film or television version of Y: The Last Man?

I think if they took enough time with it they could, if they didn't try to cram it into a 90 minute movie, sure. But we'll see... it doesn't matter whether it's faithful, it just matters if it's good or not.

What upcoming comic book films are you looking the most forward to?

Well, Dark Knight. That's the one that's going to rock the house. That's the one that's going to be amazing. Iron Man looks cool, but I was never a huge Iron Man fan, although it's inspired casting. Perfect casting. But Dark Knight... if they can get under the eclipse of the Heath Ledger story, will do really well for them. What I've seen ahead of time looks phenomenal. I just don't think you can say "Why So Serious?" anymore.

Is there any comic book property that you haven't worked on, but would love to?

From Archie Comics to DC Comics to Marvel Comics, I've written pretty much everything, but the one thing I haven't touched is Captain Marvel, the Shazam! version. Some day, at some point in my future, that's somewhere on the line.

Everybody who gets their hooks into it knows it's a great property, it's just that nobody has found a way to translate it. I don't know that you can write it for 40 year old fanboys, I don't know that there's an audience for it there. But it's the perfect young adult property, and it's just waiting to break out. He doesn't have to come from Krypton, and he doesn't have to train for years and years or become a scientist, he just says a magic word. When I was a kid, that's all I wanted.

What about Dollhouse will draw in your Buffy and Firefly fans?

Well, Eliza (Dushku). Duh. It's very different than the stuff I've done before, but at the same time it's still a very hardcore examination of the human condition. It really sort of boils it down to who are we, how are we programmed, what do we need, what is okay about us, and what is really not okay. It's the most morally gray thing I've ever done. I think it might actually anger a lot of my fans, but there are questions I still have to ask. Ultimately I think it will intrigue them because that.

We keep hearing that the strike will be over soon. How has it affected Dollhouse? Have you actually written any of it yet?

I had just pitched the seven episodes for the show, I hadn't written anything. I did not even so much as look at them during the strike, and will not until the strike is over. The day the strike is over, I will start working, so whatever we plan to do will certainly be pushed back by exactly as many months as the strike was... or still is.

Tell us a bit more about the dance project with Summer, we know you've been writing the music for that.

I've been working for a long time composing the score for a ballet short that I've wanted to film because of Summer. It's a little piece and we have a choreographer we're about to start working with it. I don't know if she's suddenly going to be shooting again or what, but we hope to shoot this hopefully in the late spring or early summer. It's something I've dreamed about pretty much ever since I met her.

What would you do with it after you finished it?

I don't know ... I guess go to festivals! I've never been to any festivals, so I guess I'd go to those with my short film. (He breaks into an impromptu little "I'm an indie short filmmaker guy" dance).

We heard you comparing Brian K. Vaughan to a Cylon up there. Are you a big Battlestar Galactica fan?

There is no bigger! I beat that "other guy" who thought he was the biggest fan. I've spent a lot of time with Ron on the picket lines, and he's very gracious about my drool for the show.

The event was strictly limited to 140 people, and hopeful attendees were camping out overnight to get some of the "standing room only" tickets that went on sale just before it started. The VIP ticket packages sold out on the web in 6 minutes, which is great since all proceeds were going to the CBLDF. However, we're sure the creative types in the room didn't mind avoiding fannish questions like "Um, in episode 7 of Firefly, Jayne wears a green shirt. Does that mean he's a spy for the Alliance?" Folks were very respectful, and the monkey got most of the attention in the room. It didn't even fling any poo at all, as far as we noticed. These were the high points of the evening:

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• Vertigo Editor Will Dennis remembered being given the editorial reins on Y after issue #15, and phoning up 100 Bullets writer Brian Azzarello for advice. Azzarello told him, "Great book. Yorick needs pussy. Don't fuck it up."
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• Joss Whedon got up and told a story about being at the San Diego Comic-Con several years ago, and someone came over and said "My friend wanted you to have this book that he wrote," and it was the first graphic novel of Y. Joss took it home where it sat amidst his junk piles until he finally read it and fell in love.
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• Brian responded by saying that he had always been inspired by a television writer who wrote strong women characters, "and that writer was named... J.J. Abrams." Zing!
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• During Joss Whedon's"keynote" speech where he spoke a lot about the final book, he said: "One of the things about the book, is that like the Cylons, he has a plan."
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• Someone asked Brian what Agent 355's real name was, and he decided not to tell anyone. "Some things should be left unanswered... I know that's scary coming from someone who's working on Lost, but some things should be left alone."
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• Pia Guerra's next book, which she announced exclusively, is going to be Doctor Who for IDW, which will come out in July. However, according to Brian, "The story is just all the different Doctors having sex with each other. One big circle jerk."
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• Brian couldn't have been nicer and more generous to Pia, saying "Those of you who know the book know it's mostly Pia, and a little bit me." Seriously, we almost got a cavity from how sweet he was to her. What a guy. However, according to him he's a guy who "Likes naked boobies and severed heads."
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• One fan asked Pia about the copy of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash on Yorick's bookshelf, and Pia said she put that in because it's on her own bookshelf at home.
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• Brian doesn't care who plays Yorick in the movie, but he has to be someone who is pretty annoying. "I like Topher Grace, who you mentioned" Pia said, to which Brian who replied "SHHHHHH!"
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• Pia cried like a baby while illustrating the scene with Ampersand in the woods. You aren't human if you can read the whole series and come to that scene and not be moved.
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• The first issue of Y was meant to have scenes of Agent 355 in Afghanistan with a Taliban artifact, but then 9/11 happened and they took it out because they thought the U.S. would bomb the country back to the stone age.
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• Brian quipped that "I only have three ideas. One is monkeys, the other is lions, and the third is jetpacks. So my next project will be monkeys with jetpacks. Fighting lions."
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• Joss asked what happened to Alter, because he hated her so much. Brian said he thinks the best way to handle villains is just to ignore them. Rather than tossing them into the heart of the sun, you just let them fade away.
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• According to Brian, he originally came up with the concept for Y as a project called Boyson, "The Last Boy On Earth" for Penthouse Comics full of "women built like robot fuck machines" and one boy remaining on the planet. After they folded, he replaced the robots with a Gloria Steinem quote and sent it over to Vertigo.
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• They live auctioned-off a page of original art from the comic book, and a Y: The Last Man straightjacket (the real thing!) which raised more than $3000 for the CBLDF. All told, the 140 people who attended the party paid admission which put more than ten grand in their coffers.
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• Y: The Last Man: Every male on Earth, human or otherwise, has died from mysterious causes... except for Yorick Brown and his monkey. This all happens in the first issue, and the entire series is about how the remaining women deal with a planet devoid of men. The series will wrap up this year, so if you haven't checked it out, try out issue #1 and you'll have plenty of time to catch up.
• NYC2123: Set in 2123 in a Manhattan that was devastated by a tsunami 70 years ago, the post-apocalyptic survivors struggle to continue living. This comic was originally conceived for Sony's PlayStation Portable and distributed under a Creative Commons license, although you can now read it online and check out the fantastically stark artwork.
• The War of the Worlds: Dark Horse Comics has the entire graphic novel adaptation of this scifi classic online, and it looks pretty vibrant even on a laptop screen. The art looks similar to Kevin O'Neil's in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the Victorian-era story is a favorite of Moore's, so you'll only feel two steps slightly removed from one of his works.
• Doom Patrol: Grant Morrison's take on this superteam from DC Comics past went well beyond the envelope and into the realm of the bizarre. He had god-like supervillains, heroes who could only use their powers when asleep, and of course, Robotman... the lone holdout from the 1960s who has appeared in every version of Doom Patrol. This is some vintage Morrison at his best and most wacky.
• DMZ: This comic book about a civil war raging in the United States in the near future follows a journalist who has become trapped behind the Free States and the United States in the demilitarized zone that is Manhattan. It's not just a comic book, but it's also a harsh political statement about our current government practices.
• Swamp Thing: This title was fading fast and heading into obscurity when DC agreed to let relatively unknown scribe Alan Moore have a crack at it. He rewrote the origin of the character, so he no longer came from chemical origins but was instead a plant elemental. However, we'll forgive him that transgression, since he brought back The Floronic Man, who was bonded to plants through chemicals.
• Chaos PhD: This tribute to the silver age of comic books features very well-drawn art, tongue in cheek humor, and of course supervillains and capes. Plus, a well done web interface that makes it easy to read.
• 1984: George Orwell's classic novel about the future as a free webcomic? Big Brother would not be pleased. Particularly with those other websites you've been visiting on your filthy little computer.

(Note: We're not judging these things on their own merits as entertainment, or science. We're looking at how much we hated their versions of the future.)

The Invasion. In this movie's future, we encounter extraterrestrial life forms, and they're like Prozac parasites. They make everybody ridiculously well-adjusted and devoid of affect. Many people complained about the new upbeat ending, but it would have been great if science had overcome the parasites in a clever, believable way. Instead, we got the magic tacked-on rescue, followed by the easy miracle cure. Blah.

Spider-Man 3. Yet another movie about an alien parasite that changes your behavior. This one causes extreme singing and dancing foolishness, plus bad emo hair. The struggle with the Venom parasite, so intense and disturbing in the comics, becomes campy and dumb. And not unlike Invasion, SM3 has a pat -feeling resolution to the parasite dilemma. Sure, it makes sense that our future holds struggles against behavior-modding creatures, but do they have to be so boring?

Bionic Woman. This TV show should be just our flavor of near-future dystopia. Normally, we love an evil brain-sucking corporation that implants its technology into a woman and then believes it owns her. Unfortunately, BW just isn't bleak or brutal enough to be a fun dystopia. Instead, it's just wishy-washy. The bionics actually make Jaime wimpier instead of stronger. And the evil corporate overlord starts baby-sitting Jaime's sister and washing her dishes. Why?

Chuck. Another NBC TV show about a human who absorbs spy technology, another boring bleak future. Chuck gets the whole CIA/NSA spy database in his brain, but the spymasters who want to use him are ruthless and scheme to murder him as soon as they can line up a replacement. Too bad Chuck is such an annoying squealer that we root for him to die so we can get Chuck 2.0 instead.

I Am Legend. This movie belongs on the "worst" list because of that horrible tacked-on ending, which made The Invasion look like Citizen Kane. First of all, the science-magic device of the mutant's blood containing the anti-plague serum isn't explained at all. And then the salvation of the human race turns out to be this crappy little whitebread New England town, walled in against the heathen plague vampires. Bring back the Partridge Family plague survivors from Omega Man!

Y: The Last Man. In previous years, this comic-book series would have been on our "best futures" list. But it gets on the "worst futures" list for 2007 because of that bogus explanation for how all the men died. Sure, every man on the planet dropping dead at once was never going to have a totally logical explanation. But the explanation we get is just nonsensical, mystical and weirdly anti-science. (There's an alternate explanation involving the Israeli military and a botched bio-weapon, but it's discounted.)

Facebook's Death Grip. We'll all have too many Facebook friends to cope with in the future, net-preneur Jason Calacanis told the Washington Post. Now that Calacanis has thousands of Facebook friends, he just can't deal with all the friend requests and other trivia. So he's outsourcing his friend-management to an intern. In a few years, we'll all be in the "death grip" of overwhelming friend management that will prevent us having a real social life and make us hate our friends. Sign us up!

Future Files: The Next 50 Years by Richard Watson. The reviews and interviews of this book alone make it sound hilarious. For starters, in the future we'll have "ethical bankruptcy" to let us launder our reputations, because all our mistakes will be exposed online. And we'll suffer from "time-famine" and "space-anxiety." D00d! Anti-globalism will crush the European Union. The items in your fridge will talk to each other and formulate a possible dinner menu. Freud, Einstein and Darwin may well be debunked. But global warming won't be much trouble. My favorite part: he doesn't actually know what Friendfinder is. He thinks it's a service that tells you where your friends are currently located. Right. And Alt.com is all about tracking alternate timelines.

The Dark Space by Marianne De Pierres. This space-opera novel takes place in a dark future where humans have colonized Orion. And it falls back on one of my pet peeves: the far-future society that somehow mimics our own past. The human settlers on the planet Araldis somehow live in a crappy copy of Renaissance Italy. Except that it's all cyber, so instead of saying "bambino," they just say "'bino." Which we kept thinking was short for "albino." Oh, and an outer-space God speaks in 1337-speak.

Heroes. And finally, another NBC TV show. (Poor suffering NBC.) We didn't hate everything about "volume two," but the visit to the evil plague future was boring. And the hero-visits-horrible-future trick already happened in season one. This time around, it felt really peremptory, like "here's your horrendous death-future, so suck it bitch." Plus it would be worth losing 98 percent of the world's population to get rid of that boring Irish woman.

Crunchy goodness: 5

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: A movie adaptation is in the works, reportedly featuring the Disburbia team of Carl Ellsworth, DJ Caruso, and (sadly) Shia LaBouf.

Elevator pitch: What if women ran the world, and turned out to be just as big assholes as the men?

Deadliest spoiler: Yorick isn't really the only man left. Oh, and the awesome Agent 355 dies after Yorick confesses his love for her.

Strange Horizons Review by Jed Hartman