The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (film)

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This article or section contains information about one or more scheduled or expected films. The content may change as the film's release approaches and more information becomes available.

For the novel of the same name, see The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a film in pre-production at Paramount Pictures. It will be based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. Produced by Scott Rudin and directed by Stephen Daldry, the film will tell the story of two cousins living in New York City in the 1930s whose comic-book creation, the Escapist, becomes a sensation. The screenplay has been adapted by the author of the novel, Michael Chabon.

[edit] History

The film adaptation of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay has had a long, complicated production history. Producer Scott Rudin had known Chabon since, in 1994, they worked together on a screenplay that Chabon pitched but never got made.^[1] Later, while working on the screen adaptation of Chabon's novel Wonder Boys, Rudin bought the movie rights to Kavalier & Clay before it had even been published, based on a one-and-a-half page pitch.^[1] In fact, Rudin was involved with the novel so early on that his name appears in the acknowledgements to the hardcover edition of the novel.

After the book's publication, Rudin hired Chabon to adapt it for the screen. As of July 2002, the process had taken 16 months and six drafts, none of which pleased the demanding Rudin.^[1] "It's like those arcade games where a gopher head pops out," Chabon said at the time. "I fix this and then another head pops out." Rudin explained that his problems with the drafts often derived from scenes in the book he wanted kept in the film and which Chabon had cut. "The obvious temptation is to be precious and try to hold onto things wonderful in the book," Rudin explained. "Michael is incredibly unprecious about his work, and I've been much more vigilant.".^[1]

In their 2002 It List, Entertainment Weekly declared Kavalier & Clay the year's "It Script," publishing a short excerpt from the screenplay. Chabon told the publication, "A lot of things about the book are really a pain in the neck [to adapt]....The story takes place over this huge span of time. There's an 11-year gap in the middle when we don't see the characters at all. I wrote the first draft of the screenplay from memory, as if there were no novel at all and I were just remembering a story that I had heard.... Much less time passes in the movie than in the book. It's really just the period of the war."^[2]

While at that point, the film was in active pre-production (with Sydney Pollack attached to direct and Jude Law in talks to play Kavalier),^[2] by late 2004, Chabon had declared the film project "very much dead."^[3] In November of that same year, though, director Stephen Daldry announced in The New York Times that he planned to direct the film "next year."^[4]

In January 2005, Chabon posted on his web site that, "about a month ago, there was a very brief buzzing, as of a fruit fly, around the film version of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It was a casting-buzz. It went like this: Tobey Maguire as Sam Clay. Jamie Bell as Joe Kavalier. Natalie Portman as Rosa Saks. It buzzed very seriously for about eleven minutes. Then it went away."^[5] As of June 2006, Chabon maintained that Portman was still "a strong likelihood for the part of Rosa," adding that "whether [this project] will move at last....into really-truly pre-production, with a budget and cast and everything, will be decided on or around 12 July 2006."^[6] In August 2006, however, it was reported that the film had "not been greenlit."^[7]

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In June 2006, Chabon posted on his web site (now defunct) the news that a number of important plot points present in the book will be left out of the movie. The list included the scene between Clay and Tracy Bacon in the ruins of the 1939 World's Fair (though the film will still feature a gay love story), the Long Island scene, and the appearances of Orson Welles and Stan Lee.^[6]