Michael Chabon pub­lished The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay in 2000, and the next year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion. The film ver­sion of the nov­el has been locked in “devel­op­ment hell” for a good decade now. (The pro­duc­er Scott Rudin has a rep­u­ta­tion for option­ing high-pro­file nov­els and sit­ting on them for a long time; he also holds the film rights to Jonathan Franzen’s The Cor­rec­tions.) Any­way, some­where in the devel­op­ment process, the direc­tor Jamie Caliri was asked to explore ani­ma­tion con­cepts, and here’s what he came up with: a fun inter­twin­ing of live action and ani­ma­tion.

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