On what would have been Gabriel García Marquez’s birthday, Netflix announced that it has acquired the rights to develop the seminal novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” more that 50 years after it was originally published, in 1967. This will be the first time the novel will be adapted for the screen.
Netflix has acquired the rights to Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and will adapt it into a series. This marks the first and only time in more than 50 years that his family has allowed the project to be adapted for the screen. pic.twitter.com/HUX1miRAJs
— Queue (@netflixqueue) March 6, 2019
Nobel Prize winning novelist’s son Rodrigo García will be an executive producer on the project along with his brother Gonzalo. Rodrigo stated that his father had received many offers over the years to adapt the book to film. But his father was concerned that the movie would not translate well into a single movie and was committed to the story being told in Spanish. However with the recent success of series and limited series, and with Netflix being at the forefront in the field, the novelist’s son stated that this won’t be a problem any longer. Vice president for Spanish language originals at Netflix, Francisco Ramos, said the company had tried before to obtain rights to the novel, but had been met with resistance. He noted the success of series like “Narcos” and movies like “Roma,” which recently won the Oscar for best foreign language film, have shown “we can make Spanish-language content for the world.” “One Hundred Years of Solitude” spans a century in the lives of the mesmerising Buendía family. The family patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the fictitious Colombian town of Macondo. The novel is considered a masterpiece of Latin American literature, popularising the genre of magical realism. Since its publication, the book has sold an estimated 50 million copies and has been translated into 46 languages. While Ramos has stated that the show should be shot in Colombia, it is too soon to say who will be cast in the series. The García brothers will not be involved in the production, according to García, so as to give space for a true adaptation.