\n<\/p>\n
I\u2019m thinking of a piece of filmed entertainment. It was adapted from a famous, internationally significant novel. It was blessed with lavish budgets, accomplished directors, ambitious visual design. A premiere was announced, ads were purchased, trailers were released \u2014 and then, one day, it was dumped onto a streaming service and almost immediately forgotten.<\/p>\n
Can you guess which one I\u2019m thinking of? It could be \u201cPachinko,\u201d or \u201cThe Fall of the House of Usher,\u201d or \u201cThe Wheel of Time,\u201d or any number of others. This past December, Netflix released over eight hours of television adapting somewhat less than half of Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez\u2019s 1967 classic, \u201cOne Hundred Years of Solitude.\u201d It has, in fact, been Hoovering up the rights to major novels from around the world, spending millions to transform them into prestige programming. In the last year alone, there has been a film adaptation of Juan Rulfo\u2019s novel \u201cPedro Paramo\u201d (from Mexico), a mini-series of Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa\u2019s 1950s novel \u201cThe Leopard\u201d (from Italy) and the first season of a version of Liu Cixin\u2019s \u201cThe Three-Body Problem\u201d (from China), which reportedly cost around $160 million to make.<\/p>\n
News that this was happening to \u201cOne Hundred Years of Solitude\u201d might have shocked M\u00e1rquez. He wrote for the movies and gave his blessing to multiple adaptations of his work, but the great Colombian writer never did sell the rights to \u201cSolitude.\u201d He thought its story, which follows the Buendia family over a century of history in the fictional city Macondo, would take 100 hours to tell properly; he also insisted it be filmed in Spanish. After his death in 2014, his widow held to these wishes; it was only in 2019, after the couple\u2019s sons had become more involved in the estate, that Netflix acquired the rights. M\u00e1rquez\u2019s heirs would be executive producers. They negotiated for the show to be made in Colombia, and in Spanish.<\/p>\n
When the series was announced, though, Netflix sounded a more global note: \u201cWe know our members around the world love watching Spanish-language films and series,\u201d said its vice president for Spanish-language programming. Netflix is available in more than 190 countries, and once a piece of original content enters its library \u2014 whether a Korean drama or a Latin American telenovela \u2014 it can be viewed most anywhere. The company seems to have pursued \u201cSolitude\u201d as an iteration of hits like \u201cThe Crown,\u201d \u201cSquid Game\u201d and \u201cMoney Heist\u201d: local productions that captivate international audiences through a combination of regional specificity and broad televisual legibility.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n