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NEW YORK -- Good Machine is quietly pushing into production "American Splendor," a hybrid documentary/live-action/animated pic to be helmed by Bob Pulcini and Shari Berman from a script they penned.

Pic, budgeted at under $2 million, begins lensing Sunday in Cleveland. Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis will star. Good Machine's Ted Hope is producing. Film, which may get a theatrical release, is being financed as a negative pickup via HBO.

Story is based on the life of Harvey Peckar, a file clerk at Cleveland's VA hospital who has been documenting his life in comicbook form. Peckar will play a small role in the pic, which has been in development for nearly three years at Good Machine.

Hope said he was excited about Pulcini and Berman's idea of doing the film as a hybrid. The scribe/helmer duo made "Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's" and "The Young and the Dead," a documentary about the Forever Hollywood Cemetery. They also have set up "Esquivel," about the composer-musician, at Fox.