March 6 (UPI) -- Netflix will adapt the landmark novel One Hundred Years of Solitude as a new TV series.
Deadline confirmed Wednesday the streaming company is developing a Spanish-language series based on the classic Gabriel García Márquez book.
The new show marks the first time One Hundred Years of Solitude will be adapted for screen. García Márquez, who died at age 87 in 2014, refused to sell the film rights during his lifetime.
Variety said García Márquez's sons, Rodrigo Garcia and Gonzalo García Barcha, will serve as executive producers on the series. The show will mainly film in Colombia, where the novel takes place.
"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," Garcia explained 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," he said.
One Hundred Years of Solitude was first published in 1967 and has sold an estimated 50 million copies worldwide. The book tells the story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded Macondo, a fictitious town in Colombia.
Netflix confirmed the news in a tweet on its See What's Next account Wednesday.
"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," the post reads.