There are few long form comic book stories that really feel like a single cohesive whole. It is just hard to maintain total continuity in style and storytelling over more than a half a decade’s worth of single issues.

Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra were able to accomplish that difficult feat with their epic series Y: The Last Man. A tale told over several years and 60 total issues, that details the last male on earth, and his pet monkey. The comic series is one of the great achievements in comic book storytelling, and is ripe for an adaptation.

The problem is that such an large tale needs more than two hours to tell, and that has slowed the adaptation process down considerably. New Line has been reluctant to sign off on a trilogy of films, but they are still very eager to move forward with a single Y: The Last Man film.

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that New Line has brought in two new writers to take a new stab at the adaptation:

Writing duo Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia are in final negotiations to write New Line Cinema’s adaptation of the acclaimed Vertigo comic book… The duo is somewhat new to the feature world but are hot out of the gate – Y is the second studio job in five months after booking Sony’s untitled Zorro origin project — but they have plenty of genre TV credits. Federman and Scaia were writer-producers on Charlie’s Angels, Human Target, Warehouse 13 and Jericho.

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If you’ve never read Brian K. Vaughn’s comic series Y: The Last Man, you’re really missing out. It’s very well written and has enjoyed tremendous popularity.

So much so, in fact, that it’s one of the reasons Vaughn ended up as a writer for ABC’s LOST for several seasons. Now, it looks like Vaughn’s TV writing career is going to continue.

According to Deadline, he has been signed to write Showtime’s drama series adaptation of Stephen King’s 2009 novel Under the Dome, from DreamWorks Television. According to the report, Vaughn was chosen after a long search by the show’s producers and will begin writing the adaptation immediately.

In case you’re not familier with the story, the supernatural thriller concerns locals at a Maine vacation spot who battle one another when a force field suddenly surrounds their town and cuts them off from the rest of the world. Yes, it takes place in Maine. Try to contain your surprise.

To be honest, this is not my favorite Stephen King novels. However, Vaughn is one of my favorite writers so hopefully he will bring his trademark wit and style to the project. The series expects to begin filming early next year for a debut sometime next Fall.

This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt are joined by John Carle and they launch into a whole new batch of topics including “Black Friday” sales success, recently released and upcoming video games like Assassins Creed 2, Left for Dead 2, Dragon Age and the massive success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The guys also discuss the infamous “French Airport” level in COD: MW2, video game movie tie-ins, the Rocky and Rambo franchises, Christmas action movies, comics related movies like Batman Forever, the greatness of Rob Marshall’s Nine, Deadpool movie possibilities and more.

The guys also made some great picks this week including John’s pick of the comic book series Y: The Last Man, Matt’s pick of Rocky on Blu-ray and Chris’ pick of 1971′s martial arts action film with a conscience Billy Jack, co-written, directed by and starring Tom Laughlin.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques or offers of sponsorship, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter and at Facebook, MySpace or via email.

Almost two years ago, it was announced the D.J. Caruso would direct and Carl Ellsworth would write a big screen adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra’s celebrated comic Y: The Last Man. Since that time and pretty much immediately, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen star Shia LaBeouf’s name has been associated with the film and speculation had been that he was in talks to take on the lead role of Yorick Brown, the “last man” of the title who survived a plague that wiped out all other men.

But now, according to an interview with Wizard Magazine, you can take LaBeouf’s name off the list of potential Yoricks. Why? Well, according to the interview, the star feels that the character is too similar to the one he’s played in both Transformers movies: Sam Witwicky.

“You take Sam and you put a monkey on his shoulder,” said LaBeouf in the interview of Yorick’s simian 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.

He added, “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.” So, now that LaBeouf is apparently out of the picture, who will take on the role of “the last man?” Well, to throw out a couple names just for fun, how about someone like Topher Grace or Adam Brody? They might work.