Surely, the last thing Michael Cunningham expected when he was writing “The Hours” was that it would ever make it to the big screen. But eventually it did, and the film that sprang from Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is up for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress (Nicole Kidman), this Sunday.

For Cunningham, the success of the movie is extremely gratifying. “It’s wonderful and completely surprising. No one expected it to have much in the way of commercial prospects, so (the filmmakers) were kind of left alone to make the movie they wanted to make. And now, to everyone’s surprise, it’s a big hit,” Cunningham said.

The novel, which was published in 1998, took Cunningham three years to write. It was inspired by the late author Virginia Woolf, who committed suicide in 1941, and her novel “Mrs. Dalloway.”

“I don’t know another writer who wrote more convincingly and thoroughly and beautifully about the simple joy of being alive,” Cunningham said of Woolf. To write the novel, Cunningham said he had to “overcome an obsessive reverence for (“Mrs. Dalloway”). I had to apply to the book a tough love that implied a willingness to dismantle it. It has a mystery at its heart. It’s impossible to say why it’s affecting.”

While many think that it would be difficult for a man to write a novel about three women, Cunningham said this wasn’t a problem. “I really think that men know what it’s like to be a woman; women know what it’s like to be a man. I don’t think I know anything about women that most men don’t know,” he said.

The women in the novel were brought to life by Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. Cunningham said that the three were brilliant, bringing their own unique talents to their roles. But their casting was also a bit of a challenge, Cunningham said. “I think it was something for the movie to overcome, that we know these people as Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, so there is a certain type of suspension of disbelief required.”

Cunningham said that it was not too hard to pass the rights of his book to someone else. “If I’m fortunate enough to find that someone I respect wants to carry the story someplace else, my reaction is, ‘Great. Go,'” he said. “I wouldn’t want a strictly faithful adaptation. The whole fun of it is seeing what another writer or director will do with what you’ve started.”

Cunningham said he hopes that the success of “The Hours” will bring other thought-provoking films out of the woodwork. “I think all of us connected with the movie feel hugely encouraged by the notion that there is a significant body of people out there who want to see an unorthodox movie,” he said. “It turns out that if you offer people something intelligent, and maybe even a little difficult, they’ll respond.”

Cunningham feels the main similarity between the film and his novel is that “they are both about a kind of hope, a kind of optimism, that can survive the worst of what might happen to people.”

As for the elusive title, which moviegoers have been pondering, Cunningham said, “It is a reference to the fact that we all know we’re not here forever, but here’s this hour right now, and look at it. Look at the beauty of it, of just being here.”

Viewers across the nation have been struck by “the beauty of it,” and with any luck, Academy voters will feel the same way.

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