According to Deadline, Netflix has successfully acquired the rights to Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 classic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. The streaming service is planning to adapt the best-selling novel into a Spanish-language series.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is magical realism novel that follows the story of the multi-generational Buendia family, whose patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia founded Macondo, a fictional town in Colombia. This project will mark the first time the story will be adapted for screen because author García Márquez refuses to sell the rights to his novel when he was alive.
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“For decades, our father was reluctant to sell the film rights to Cien Años de Soledad because he believed that it could not be made under the time constraints of a feature film, or that producing it in a language other than Spanish would not do it justice,” García Márquez’s son Rodrigo Garcia said in a statement.
“But in the current golden age of series, with the level of talented writing and directing, the cinematic quality of content, and the acceptance by worldwide audiences of programs in foreign languages, the time could not be better to bring an adaptation to the extraordinary global viewership that Netflix provides. We are excited to support Netflix and the filmmakers in this venture, and eager to see the final product.”
Garcia will serve as the upcoming series’ executive producer along with his brother Gonzalo García Barcha. It will be shot in Columbia which is the novel’s original setting. The adaptation is set to debut in 2020, exclusively on Netflix.
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“We are incredibly honored to be entrusted with the first filmed adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a timeless and iconic story from Latin America that we are thrilled to share with the world,” Netflix’s Vice President of Spanish Language Originals Francisco Ramos said. “We know our members around the world love watching Spanish-language films and series and we feel this will be a perfect match of project and our platform.”
García Márquez is regarded as one of the best Spanish-language authors. He died of pneumonia at the old age of 87 in April 17, 2014. He is also best known for his other works such as The Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera, and the Chronicle of a Death Fortold.
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