The long-gestating adaptation of author Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay has been at the top of Hollywood’s to-do list since its publication in 2000. Now, more than a decade later, filmmaker Stephen Daldry has breathed new life into the project by suggesting it be taken to HBO, and produced as an 8-hour miniseries.

Fans of the book will no doubt squeal with delight at the suggestion, which would grant a more comprehensive staging of the sweeping novel. The story concerns Joe Kavalier, who after escaping from the Nazis joins his cousin Sammy Clay in New York. Together, with their shared love of art and storytelling, the pair becomes a Siegel and Shuster-esque phenomenon after creating the comic book character, The Escapist.

Daldry, who directed the upcoming Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, also helmed such films as Billy Elliot, The Hours and The Reader – the last two earning Academy Awards for Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet, respectively. The filmmaker was brought on in 2009 to helm The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay as a feature produced by Scott Rudin. At one point the film was set up with the late Sydney Pollack to direct, starring the likes of Natalie Portman and Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Despite the talent behind it and the attractiveness of the concept, a consensus was never reached on the script, and the project was subsequently placed on the back-burner.

Now, in an interview with Collider, Daldry confirms he’s not given up hope on the project, and, in fact, would like to see it land at HBO.

It’s nice that, like some sort of cinematic sommelier, Daldry offers such a choice pairing of Kavalier and Boardwalk. For now, however, this is just Daldry talking about where he’d like to see the project find a home – though the idea certainly sounds right up HBO’s alley. At the moment, the network is working with Rudin on converting Jonathan Franzen’s literary work The Corrections into a series featuring Chris Cooper, Diane Wiest and Ewan McGregor. Meanwhile, Michael Chabon and his wife Ayelet Waldman are working to bring the original series Hobgoblin to HBO with director Darren Aronofsky onboard to helm the pilot.

One crucial sticking point could be the rights, however. Right now, they rest with Paramount – which, according to Daldry, leaves things somewhat up in the air.

The fact that Daldry is suggesting what would be a very ambitious project by adding such specifics as a potential network and run time, implies this is no mere notion that just popped into his head. And although the rights to Kavalier & Clay sit elsewhere, with the various creative connections all converging on HBO, it’s hard to imagine this idea not coming to fruition.

I'd recommend starting with The Yiddish Policemen's Union. It's a sort of Cohen Brothers-ish murder mystery set in a fictional Jewish town in Alaska that was founded after Israel was destroyed in 1948. It's dark and funny.

I'd never heard of this. I'll have to read it.

It's very, very good. One of my favorite novels.

Fair warning, it's a bit literary. Literary is code here for "boring at times to many." It is a real attempt (successful, in my book) to write great literature about the founding of comics as we know them.

And though the thing up there describes the duo as reminiscent of Siegel and Schuster, the better fit is Simon and Kirby. That's who Chabon had in mind more closely. (Although the parallels are not exact for any one creative duo you pick). But Kirby's Miracle Man was the most direct inspiration for the Escapist. And Kavalier burns with the kind of anti-Nazi fervor that must have led Kirby to draw Captain America punching Hitler.

Wait...

Kavalier and Clay is so great. I'm due for a re-read, I think -- maybe I'll read along with Simon, and then roll right into The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which I haven't gotten to yet.