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Celebrated author and lifelong friend and defender of Fidel Castro, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, has finally succumbed to the lure of the dollar. After years of spurning offers from Hollywood to turn his bestselling and critically acclaimed works into films, Marquez has finally agreed to let a Los Angeles-based company to make a film based on Love in the Time of Cholera. Stone Village Pictures will pay the writer anything between $ 1 million and 3 million for the movie. The 76-year-old novelist who is battling lymphatic cancer says he took "the Yankee dollar" to earn a "family pension" to secure the future of his partner Mercedes, with whom he fell in love when she was just 13, and their two sons. His book One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in 1967, earned him international fame and a fortune. But investment in Cambio, a radical Mexican newsmagazine, has apparently drained his assets. An unsparing critic of the USA, Marquez remained fiercely loyal to Castro even after many others turned their backs on the Cuban leader. In 1983, Marquez came to India with Castro for the Non-Aligned Meet, but did not make a public appearance. His works have been translated into many international languages, including Indian languages. Interestingly, he is not opposed to piracy of literary works, which he feels is proof that the works are being read. Marquez has, till now, resisted temptation to allow English-film versions of his books. The most commercial adaptation of his book was the 1987 Italian film based on Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Producer Scot Steindorff, who has purchased the rights of Love in the Time of Cholera, hopes to be able to persuade Marquez to write the screenplay for the film. — PT |
