Netflix announced on Wednesday that it had acquired the rights to develop Gabriel García Márquez’s seminal novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” more than 50 years after it was originally published, in 1967. It will be the first time the novel is adapted for the screen.

It was not for lack of interest. In a recent call, the Nobel Prize winning novelist’s son Rodrigo García who will be an executive producer on the project along with his brother Gonzalo, said that his father had received many offers over the years to adapt the book to film. But, while some of his shorter books were adapted, his father was concerned that “One Hundred Years of Solitude” would not translate well or fit within a single movie (or even two), he added. García Márquez was also committed to the story being told in Spanish, so many offers were “non-starters” to him.

“In the last three or four years, the level and prestige and success of series and limited series has grown so much,” García said about his family’s decision to sell the development rights now. “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.”

Francisco Ramos, the vice president for Spanish language originals at Netflix, 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, that have shown “we can make Spanish-language content for the world.”