Netflix Is Turning ‘One Hundred Years Of Solitude’ Into A Series, 50-Plus Years After The Book’s Publication

Gabriel García Márquez’s landmark novel One Hundred Years of Solitude was published in 1967. But it has never been adapted into a film or TV series, despite having sold over 30 million copies worldwide and countless glowing reviews, like this one the New York Times Book Review: “One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.” (I felt the same way after I read Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets for the first time.) García Márquez received many offers over the years, but according to the New York Times, he “was concerned that the story would not translate well or fit within a single movie (or even two)… García Márquez was also committed to the story being told in Spanish, so many offers were ‘non-starters’ to him.

But at long last, the family (García Márquez, who also won the Nobel Prize in Literature, died in 2014) has decided to sell the rights to Netflix. “In the last three or four years, the level and prestige and success of series and limited series has grown so much,” said García Márquez’s son Rodrigo García. “Netflix was among the first to prove that people are more willing than ever to see series that are produced in foreign languages with subtitles. All that seems to be a problem that is no longer a problem.” He added that he’s heard the discussion whether to sell the rights to Solitude “since I was eight. It was not an uncomplicated decision to make, for myself and my brother and my mom. It feels like a great chapter opened, but also a long chapter has closed.”

Via the New York Times:

One Hundred Years of Solitude spans a century in the lives of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the fictitious Colombian town of Macondo. It’s considered a masterpiece of Latin American literature, bringing García Márquez to the forefront of the so-called Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 70s and popularizing the genre of magical realism.

No casting information is currently available, but Francisco Ramos, vice president for Spanish language originals at Netflix, is looking for “the best Latin American talent,” and noted that the show will be shot in Colombia. Needless to say, a lot of money was involved to get the rights, but “the financial details of the arrangement were not disclosed.” All that solitude doesn’t come cheap.

(Via New York Times)