Although the long-languishing television adaptation of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s comic Locke and Key has hit Netflix, it's far from the only comic-based project to get stuck in development hell. Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's Y: The Last Man has been in development since at least 2007. And since the upcoming FX series based on the comic just lost its lead actor, those troubles still aren't over. Here's everything you need to know about the project's troubled production history.

Y: The Last Man follows Yorick Brown and his monkey companion Ampersand, the sole survivors of a plague that kills every male mammal on Earth. The comic was first published in 2002 under DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, and become one of the storied imprint's most celebrated titles over its five-year run.

RELATED: Vertigo: How the DC Imprint Changed Comics Forever

While Y: The Last Man has been in development as an FX TV series since 2015 under FX, it was originally planned as a feature film adaptation. In 2007, the film rights to the series were acquired by New Line Cinema. Screenwriter Carl Ellsworth and director D. J. Caruso were attached to the project with David S. Goyer as a producer.

Caruso maintained that the source material was too extensive to fit into just one movie, and Caruso planned to turn the comic into a feature film trilogy, potentially starring Shia LaBeouf as Yorrick and Alicia Keys as Agent 355, Yorrick's bodyguard. However,  LaBeouf later shot down the rumors and claimed that the role is too similar to  Transformers' Sam Witwicky. Caruso ultimately walked away from the project when New Line rejected his trilogy idea, as the studio initially only intended on a standalone movie.

In 2012, writers Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia entered final negotiations to pen New Line's adaptation of the series, with Dan Trachtenberg attached to direct and Goyer was still attached to produce. However, the rights eventually reverted back to comic creators Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra when the film failed to go into production with a finalized script.

RELATED: FX's Y: The Last Man Finds a New Showrunner

Y the Last Man pilot

Vaughan and Guerra then expressed their interest in turning Y: The Last Man into a television series, simply titled Y. In 2015, FX announced that it had started work on adapting Y: The Last Man, it was confirmed a year later that Michael Green and Aïda Mashaka Croal would serve as a showrunner for the series, and Green wrote the pilot alongside Brian K. Vaughan. The production of Y: The Last Man was already slammed by PETA for using a real-life monkey on set instead of utilizing CGI. Although a pilot starring Barry Keoghan, Diane Lane, Imogen Poots and Lashana Lynch was produced, both showrunners exited the project in April 2019 due to creative differences.

Last week, FX announced that it would be replacing Keoghan as the show's lead character. As of this writing, it's not clear why the Dunkirk star was recast. Although the series was expected to debut in 2020, the loss of its lead actor makes this prospect increasingly unlikely.

While FX and new showrunner Eliza Clark have already begun casting for a new lead for the series, Y: The Last Man is well on its way to becoming one of the most cursed adaptations of all time, and it will be a minor miracle if Y: The Last Man is ever able to make it to the small screen.

Y stars Diane Lane as Senator Jennifer Brown, Imogen Poots as Hero Brown, Lashana Lynch as Agent 355, Juliana Canfield as Beth, Marin Ireland as Nora, Amber Tamblyn as Mariette Callows and Timothy Hutton as the U.S. President.

KEEP READING: Locke & Key: Every Key in Season 1 (And What They Do)