HBO has picked up the rights to a historical drama from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon and his wife Ayelet Waldman, Variety reports.

Tentatively titled Hobgoblin, the potential series centers on a group of magicians and con men who use their skills at deception to fight Hitler and his forces during World War II.

Chabon and Waldman will co-write the script -- it's their first collaboration -- and executive produce, along with John Lesher and Adam Kassan.

Chabon, whose 2000 novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, worked with director Andrew Stanton on the upcoming Disney adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars. His 1995 novel Wonder Boys was the basis of the 2000 film starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire and Robert Downey Jr. His alternate-history mystery novel The Yiddish Policeman's Union is in development at Sony with Scott Rudin and Joel and Ethan Coen.

Waldman is an author and essayist whose work includes The Mommy-Track Mysteries series, and the 2006 novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, which was adapted as the 2009 Natalie Portman film The Other Woman.