Michael Chabon’s book is getting the TV treatment…

Star Trek: Picard showrunner Michael Chabon is still working on a TV adaptation of his bestselling novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The series’ producer, Akiva Goldsman, has recently offered an update on the progress of the mammoth project, which is being written by Chabon and his wife Ayelet Waldman. Goldsman is producing the effort alongside CBS’s Star Trek puppet master, Alex Kurtzman.

“We’re doing Kavalier & Clay, all of us, so, that’s exciting,” Goldsman told Collider. “Michael and his wife Ayelet Waldman, together, they’re writing the whole thing, and it is not a movie. The two of them and Alex Kurtzman and I, who are producing it with them, have sat around and got to do that thing that you wanna do with one of your favourite novels with the author in the room, which is go, ‘What if you did… and how do you…’ And it’s super fun. I do know how long it is, and again I’m not gonna tell you, only because I feel like it’s not actually mine to share. It’s theirs to share. But I think that they are going to give it the breadth it deserves.”

Goldsman was less sure if the project will definitely move forward after the writing stage, however – “Depending on different deal structures, two scripts can trigger it, ten scripts can trigger, no scripts can trigger, an actor can trigger, so I don’t know what the construct of that is, simply because right now they’re writing and that comes first,” he said – so it appears the series doesn’t have a firm commitment yet.

Here’s a quick synopsis of the book, if you’re not familiar with the plot:

“A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink.”