Gabriel Garcia Marquez has refused to allow the film adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Despite being universally acclaimed as a major work of literature about the history of the isolated town of Macon and the Buendas family who founded it, no film adaptation of the book has ever been made, as the author declined every offer to sign away the film rights. Love in the Time of Cholera, directed by Mike Newell, was the first film adaptation of one of his novels, released in 2007. Friends claimed Márquez only agreed to the deal because he had cancer and was worried about his family's future. However, the author now considers One Hundred Years of Solitude "unfilmable" unless the film include