You’ve probably heard about Isabel Allende, the best-selling, critically acclaimed Chilean author who’s written literary gems such as City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias) and Maya’s Notebook (El cuaderno de Maya). And if you haven’t, you really should get to know some of her works. It’s not only that she has been called a “genius” (Los Angeles Times), and a “literary legend” (Latino Leaders Magazine), but, and perhaps more importantly, we are soon gonna be seeing one of her greatest literary hits on screen, according to Deadline.
Isabel Allende
The upcoming show and the novel behind
Hulu and FilmNation Entertainment (Arrival) just announced that, following a fierce bidding battle with other keenly interested parties, they will be adapting Allende’s commercially successful and critically praised debut novel, The House of the Spirits—taking its endearing story and characters into the realm of TV series.
Allende published the work in Buenos Aires in 1982 and became an instant best-seller as well as a critic-favorite.
The novel follows the trials and tribulations of multiple generations of the Trueba family in Chile, incorporating elements of magical realism to tell a tags-to-riches kind of tale in a period of social and political upheaval. The House of the Spirits has been translated into over 35 languages and has sold more than 70 million copies worldwide. Back in 1993, Hollywood realized the novel’s appeal and took a shot at adapting it into a feature film starring Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Winona Ryder, Glenn Close, and Antonio Banderas. The film was, to put it mildly, a failure: as whitewashed as it was uninspired. We can only hope that this time around, the adaptation will feature a true cast of Latinxs—that’s pretty much a must for the storyline to work, after all.
Glenn Close and Meryl Streep in the 1993 adaptation of The House of the Spirits. The upcoming show is just on the early stages of development, however, so it’s probably going to be a while before we hear any news about casting. All we know at the moment is that Isabel Allende herself is on board as executive producer, and the search for a director and a screenwriter to write the adaptation has barely just begun. There’s no word on an estimated release date yet.
A time to shine
After massive successes like Chernobyl and Game of Thrones, we’re certainly living in a golden age for digital TV offerings, and it’s only fitting that The House of the Spirits now joins the fray of worthy adaptations seeking a dedicated audience.
Hulu will try to keep their offer of award-winning original series after the massive success of The Handmaid’s Tale, which is also an adaptation from a noteworthy work of literature: Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name. Hulu other current or upcoming high-quality series include The Looming Tower, Little Fires Everywhere, and Castle Rock.
This is the second big digital TV adaptation of a magical-realism Latin American novel that we’ve heard about in the recent months, following Netflix announcement that they’re bringing Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to life. Here’s hoping both adaptations will live up to the legendary works they’re based on, and that both Hulu and Netflix will honor the Lantinx spirit behind the source material.
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