Gabriel García Márquez's Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) is quite literally required reading for many high schoolers. So when Netflix first approached Argentinian-born director Alex García López to helm the first season of the beloved novel's adaptation, he had to take a minute to truly grasp what it would mean to take on García Márquez's text.

"I (first) read the book when I was a teenager, and I loved it. It's an incredible piece of literature, incredibly unique, powerful, magical, violent, dramatic, emotional. It has everything," García López tells Entertainment Weekly. "It tells the story of, not only Colombia, but I think of Latin America as a whole. So when Netflix approached me, my initial reaction was like, 'I'll have to re-read it again and get back to you,' because it's a daunting task. It's a very epic novel, not only creatively, but also in terms of the cultural weight of bringing such a big, beloved book to life."

Pablo Arellano/Netflix

Taking his homework seriously, García López re-read the novel in both English and Spanish before he jumped onboard, though he was still a little nervous. "With all big projects, I think if there's not an element of fear in there driving you and inspiring you, then it's not worth doing it," he says.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a monumental work of fiction that tells the story of a young couple in love, José Arcadio Buendía (Marco Antonio González) and Úrsula Iguarán (Susana Morales), who defy their parents' wishes and marry, and end up becoming founders of a Utopian city by the sea named Macondo. The mystical city then becomes home to seven generations of the Bendía family as they experience love, war, and the unexplainable.

For López, bringing that story to the screen meant asking the García Márquez family for their blessing. "It was incredibly important to the García Márquez family that it had to be filmed in Colombia, with Colombian actors in Spanish," says García López.

The reason for the very specific request? The director notes that, "In the '70s, '80s, and '90s there was a lot of white-washed Hollywood adaptations of Latin American novels. Gabo suffered from a few of those adaptations. He was very much against seeing what happened with Love During the Time of Cholera, and he never wanted that to happen again with Cien Años de Soledad."

With this in mind, Netflix put out a casting call in Colombia before seeing more than 10,000 people at open calls. The final cast is made up of 97 percent of Colombian actors.

Pablo Arellano/Netflix

"I think the themes of the novel are incredibly universal: Love and passion and loss and civil war and family drama," García López says. "This is why the book became a world hit. However, what I do find that's incredibly Caribbean, and not only Colombian, but specifically Caribbean, is the execution."

He continues, "That's when magic realism comes to the fold, because I think to understand magic or realism, what you have to understand is what it means to believe in magical realism. And I think that comes from the ideologist's beliefs of many cultures that lived in the Caribbean, still to this day."

Colombia, particularly the coastal area (Garcia Marquez hailed from Aracataca, a small town along Colombia's Caribbean coast), has a significant African influence due to the slave trade in the 17th century. García López explains how the region still "has strong spiritual beliefs in things like spirits and the afterlife and unexplainable events."

Mauro González/Netflix

García López then worked to combine those beliefs with the less-exciting elements of everyday life. "Gabo always said that everything that happened in One Hundred Years of Solitude was part of his upbringing," he says. "Once you realize that the events are incredibly mundane in everyday life, how you want to execute them is exactly that. So it was always about executing the magic realism moments in the most mundane way."

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That includes a bag of bones that he says "is moving around the house almost like an annoying puppy and nobody cares.

"That was very much my vision for capturing these wonderful, unexplainable, sometimes slightly terrifying moments," García López continues. "There's a lot of comedy in the book."

All of the book's elements will come together for the 16-episode series that will be told across two seasons, the first of which premieres in December on Netflix.